The conversation
Each tab shows its conversation as a column of cards: what you sent, what Claude replied, the tools it used, and how each turn ended. This chapter covers reading it, finding your way around a long one, copying from it, taking notes beside it, exporting it, going back to an earlier message, and the images and files in it.
Answering Claude’s questions and permission prompts is in Permissions and prompts. Writing your own messages is in The composer.
In this chapter
- Reading the conversationA tab's conversation is drawn from what Claude Code sends, not from terminal text.
- Tool callsWhen Claude reads a file, edits one, runs a command or searches, that is a tool call.
- Thinking, notes and hooksBetween your messages and Claude's replies, the conversation shows Claude's thinking, notices from Claude Code and Claudette, and the hooks that ran.
- SubagentsClaude can hand part of its work to a subagent: a helper that runs inside the same session with its own instructions and its own tool calls, and hands a report back.
- The end of a turnThe cards that end a turn: the files it changed, its statistics, where the task list stands and the docs Claude wrote.
- Finding your wayA long conversation can run to thousands of cards.
- Copying and quotingYou can copy a whole message, copy a selection, quote part of a reply back to Claude, or keep a piece of it on the project's scratch pad.
- The scratch padThe scratch pad is a place for notes beside the conversation: what to check later, a command worth keeping, a piece of a reply.
- ExportingThe file is written under a temporary name and then renamed, so a failed export never leaves half a file under the name you chose.
- Rewind and branchYou can go back to an earlier message: change it and send it again, start a new tab from just before it, or put the files Claude changed since back as they were.
- ImagesThe images Claude's tools hand it, shown under their cards, the images in its replies, and the image files and links it names.
- Files and links in repliesClaude names files as it works: weapons.md is written, see docs/specs/weapons.md, Player.cpp:42.
- The working line and running tasksWhile Claude works, a line above the composer says so.