Organize chats
Glean Tau keeps every chat in the sidebar. As that list grows, pin the chats you return to, group the rest by project, and archive what you're finished with.
How you organize chats is local to this computer. Pins, archive state, and unread flags stay on the device where you set them, and don't follow you to another computer or to Glean Web.
Decide how to organize
Glean Tau offers the following actions to organize chats:
| Action | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Find an earlier chat | You remember the subject but not which chat it was in. |
| Pin a chat | You check the chat often and want it at the top, no matter which project it belongs to. |
| Move a chat to a project | The chat belongs with a different project's folder. |
| Rename a chat | The generated title doesn't describe the work. |
| Archive a chat | You're finished with it and want it out of the list without deleting it. |
| Set archive retention | You want archived chats deleted automatically, or kept forever. |
| Switch the list layout | You'd rather see recent activity than project structure. |
| Focus on active chats | The list is long and you only want what's running now. |
| Quote text in your next prompt | You want to ask about one specific part of a message. |
Pin a chat
Pinned chats appear in a Pinned section at the top of the sidebar, above every project. Pinning is useful for a chat you return to across days, or one you want reachable from any project.
Pin it
Right-click a chat and choose Pin chat. It moves to the Pinned section.
Reorder pinned chats
Pinned chats stay in the order you pinned them, with the earliest first. Unpin and pin again to move one to the bottom.
Unpin it
Hover the chat row and select the pin icon, or right-click and choose Unpin chat. The chat returns to its project.
A pinned chat keeps its project. Pinning changes only where it appears in the sidebar.
Drag and drop chats
Drag a chat row to move it without opening a menu.
| Drag a chat onto | Result |
|---|---|
| The Pinned section | Pins the chat |
| A different project | Moves the chat to that project |
| Its own project, while pinned | Unpins the chat |
While you drag, Glean Tau highlights the target and shows a drop indicator. Invalid targets refuse the drop rather than doing something unexpected. Dragging near the top or bottom edge of the list scrolls it, so you can reach a project that's out of view.
Three things prevent a drop:
- Archived chats can't be dragged. Restore the chat first.
- Project drops need the grouped layout. In the By recency layout there are no project rows to drop onto, so only pinning works.
- A chat with a response in progress can't change project, unless it's the chat you have open. Wait for the response to finish, or open the chat first. You can still pin and unpin it.
Change the chat list layout
Use the chat list layout menu at the top of the sidebar to choose how chats are grouped:
- Grouped by project organizes chats under their project, with No project for chats that don't have one. This is the layout that supports drag-and-drop between projects.
- By recency shows a single flat list, most recently updated first.
Focus on active chats
Focus mode hides everything except in-progress and recent chats, which helps when the sidebar is long and you only care about what's running now. Toggle it with Cmd+Option+Z.
Once you pass about 100 chats and enough of them have gone untouched for 30 days, Glean Tau offers to help you review them. Pinned, unread, running, and draft chats are never suggested for cleanup.
Rename, archive, and delete
Right-click any chat for the rest of its actions:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename chat | Replaces the generated title with your own. |
| Change project | Moves the chat to a project you pick, as an alternative to dragging. |
| Change working directory | Points the chat at a different folder. |
| Open in chat window | Opens the chat in a separate floating window. |
| Copy | Copies the chat's Working directory, Session ID, Deeplink, or the chat As Markdown. |
| Mark as unread / Mark as read | Flags a chat to come back to, or clears that flag. |
| Archive chat | Removes the chat from the main list and puts it in Archived. |
| Fork chat | Creates a copy from the existing conversation, so you can try a different direction without losing the original. |
| Delete chat | Permanently removes the chat. |
Change project, Change working directory, Fork chat, and Delete chat are unavailable while a response is running.
Archiving is reversible: open the Archived section to find the chat and restore it. Archiving also unpins the chat and clears its unread flag, so restoring it doesn't return it to Pinned. If the chat has a response in progress, Glean Tau cancels that run before archiving it.
You can archive the current chat with Cmd+Shift+A, and restore the chat you archived most recently with Cmd+Shift+T.
An archived chat is read-only. Open one and the composer explains that it's archived and offers a link to restore it so you can continue.
Set archived chats retention period
Glean Tau automatically deletes chats after a retention period. In Settings → Storage, find Archived chats and the Retention period (days) field.
The default is 30 days, counted from when you archived each chat. You can enter up to 3650 days (about 10 years).
Enter 0 to turn off automatic deletion. Glean Tau keeps archived chats indefinitely until you delete them yourself.
Glean Tau does not automatically delete some archived chats, even after the retention period. Glean Tau skips automatic deletion for a chat that is currently open, still running, waiting for your input, pinned, marked unread, or holding an unsent draft.
Automatic deletion is permanent and does not ask for confirmation. Set the period to 0 if you'd rather review the archive yourself.
Find an earlier chat
Every chat keeps its full transcript and tool activity, so you can reopen it from the sidebar and pick up where you left off. Automation runs are kept the same way. See Automations.
To find a chat you don't see in the sidebar, use one of these:
- Search your chats. Select Search chats in the top bar, or press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows). Matching titles appear right away, then Glean Tau searches chat transcripts. Use Filter chats by project to narrow the results.
- Ask Glean Tau. In any chat, ask it to find, summarize, or read from an earlier chat, such as "Summarize the decisions from last week's pricing chat." It can also open, rename, or archive the chat, or move it to a project, for you.
Chats stay on the computer where you created them. They don't sync to other devices and don't appear in Glean Web.
Right-click a message in a chat
Right-clicking inside the conversation gives you actions for that message rather than the whole chat:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Copy prompt | Copies your request. |
| Copy response | Copies the agent's reply. |
| Copy selected text | Copies just the text you highlighted. |
| Copy as Markdown | Copies the message with its formatting intact. |
| Add selection to chat | Puts the highlighted text into the composer as context for your next request. |
| Edit and resend | Changes your request and runs it again. |
| Fork from here | Starts a new chat from this response, keeping the conversation up to it. |
| Open in chat window | Opens the chat in a separate floating window. |
Use Fork from here when a conversation has gone in a direction you want to keep, but you also want to try something different from an earlier point.
Some items appear only when they apply. Copy selected text and Add selection to chat need a text selection, Edit and resend works on your own messages, and Fork from here works on the agent's responses.
Quote text from a chat in your next prompt
When you want to ask about one part of a response, quote it instead of describing it. Glean Tau inserts the text into the composer as a Markdown quote, so your follow-up question stays attached to the exact wording.
Highlight the text
Drag across the part of a response you want to reference.
Select Add to chat
A small Add to chat button appears beside your selection. Select it, and the text drops into the composer as a quote with the cursor after it.
Type your question
Add your question below the quote, then send it as usual.
This is useful for asking the agent to expand on one paragraph of a long answer, or to correct a single detail without repeating it yourself.
To quote one of your own prompts, right-click the highlighted text and choose Add selection to chat. The floating Add to chat button appears on the agent's responses only, but the right-click action works on both your prompts and the responses.
The same right-click menu has Copy selected text if you want the text on your clipboard instead of in the composer.
See also
- Work in projects — group related chats and connect a working folder
- Chat over another app — reach pinned and recent chats from the menu bar