Chat Tab

Your Agent’s Chat Interface

The Chat tab is the primary way to interact with your agent through the BrainRoad dashboard. It works like a messaging app — type a message, hit send, and your agent responds.

This is the same interface you land on when you open an agent’s detail page. If your agent is connected to WhatsApp, Signal, or email, it can also receive messages through those channels. The Chat tab lets you talk to it directly without going through an external app.

What You Can Do

• Ask questions — your agent uses its configured AI model to respond.
• Give instructions — tell it to draft an email, research a topic, or schedule a task.
• Test behavior — after changing agent settings, use Chat to verify the agent responds the way you expect.
• Trigger skills — if your agent has skills installed, you can invoke them through natural conversation.

How It Works

The Chat tab is powered by OpenClaw’s WebChat interface. Chat messages are sent to your agent via a WebSocket connection. Your agent processes the message using whichever AI model is configured with your API keys and streams the response back in real time.

Conversations persist in your agent’s memory within its isolated container. Your agent remembers context from earlier in the conversation and from previous sessions.

Chat Commands

Your agent supports slash commands in the Chat tab. Type a command instead of a regular message:

Command	What It Does
/status	Shows current model, token count, and cost
/new	Starts a fresh conversation
/compact	Compresses context to save tokens
/think high	Enables extended thinking for complex tasks

For the full list of chat commands, see Chat Commands.

When Chat Is Unavailable

The Chat tab requires your agent to be running. If your agent is stopped, you will see a message prompting you to start it. Once the agent boots, the Chat tab becomes active within a few seconds.

If you see connection errors, check the troubleshooting guide.