A side chat is a copy of a chat’s session that opens next to it. It knows everything the chat knows up to that point, so you can ask why it did something, or what a file does, without putting the question into the chat itself. A side chat can read and answer. It cannot change anything.
Open one
- Open a running chat that has at least one turn.
- Open the session menu (… at the right of the status strip) and click New side chat.
- Ask your question in the drawer that opens on the right.
You can do this while the chat is mid-turn. The main chat keeps going, and the side chat answers from the history it has.
Each side chat is a tab in the drawer, named Side 1, Side 2 and so on. Click + (Open another side chat) in the drawer for another one. Drag the drawer’s left edge to make it wider or narrower.
Once a chat has side chats, the session menu lists them under Side chats, with + to start another. Each one says whether it is In front, Open or Closed. Click an open one to bring it to the front of the drawer.
Read-only
A side chat cannot write files or change anything else, and Tori enforces that itself. You cannot turn it off.
- It runs in the agent’s read-only mode: plan mode for Claude, read-only for Codex. It has no mode picker. If the agent ever leaves that mode, the side chat is closed with This side chat left read-only mode (the new mode), so it was closed.
- Every permission ask is denied before you see it. A side chat that tries to edit a file gets a refusal and answers in text instead.
- With Claude it cannot run shell commands at all, even ones your settings allow. It can still read and search files.
- Of Tori’s own tools it can only use the ones that read, such as looking up a pull request or a checkpoint’s diff. Anything that would change a session, a checkpoint, the autopilot or the forge is refused.
- Questions the agent asks you still reach you in the drawer.
When Claude in plan mode hands its answer over as a plan, the plan text is shown as the reply.
Codex opens in its own default mode, and Tori switches it to read-only before anything is sent. Until Codex confirms the switch, a send is refused with This side chat is still switching to read-only mode.
Send an answer to the chat
Every finished reply in a side chat has Send to chat. Clicking it sends the reply to the main chat as your next message, starting with From a side chat: so the agent knows where it came from. The button then reads Sent, so one reply cannot go twice.
If the main chat cannot take a message right now (it has ended, the autopilot is driving it, it is past its spending limit, or it is still opening), the reason shows next to the button and nothing is sent.
Nothing goes from a side chat to the main chat unless you click Send to chat.
Spending and limits
What a side chat spends counts toward the main chat’s spending limit and toward its autopilot item, if it has one. Once the two together pass the limit, both stop at their next turn.
A side chat is not a worker. It does count toward how many chats are running at once, but not toward the notice about two chats in one worktree.
Close and relaunch
Close a side chat with its tab’s x. Its session ends, but it stays in the session menu’s Side chats list as Closed. Click it there to reopen it: it comes back with its conversation, still read-only. A side chat closed before you asked it anything comes back as a fresh copy of the session.
To take a side chat off the list, hover it in the menu and click its x. Its transcript stays in History. Closing the main chat’s tab removes all its side chats too.
Side chats come back when Tori restores your tabs after a relaunch, open and closed alike, still read-only. A restored side chat shows its transcript and starts again on your next message.
Which agents
Side chats work on Claude, and on Codex when it has told Tori it can fork a session. Other agents do not show the button, because Tori has no read-only mode for them that it can check.