Making a thread

Everything about threads is in a tab’s Thread submenu: right-click the tab in the sidebar, or in the rail when the sidebar is collapsed. The same commands are in the command palette, where each one’s name starts the same way.

Making a tab a thread

1. Right-click the tab and choose Thread → Make this tab a thread.
2. Add sub-threads, either way:
   • On the thread, choose Thread → New sub-thread. A new tab opens in the thread’s folder and is assigned to it.
   • Or choose Thread → New sub-thread in a worktree to give it its own worktree, so its changes stay apart from the thread’s checkout (Worktree tabs).
   • Or, on another tab in the same folder group, choose Thread → Assign to thread and pick the thread.

Only tabs in the thread’s folder group can join it, including worktree tabs of its checkout. A sub-thread can’t be a thread: threads don’t nest. The thread’s Claude knows each sub-thread by its tab’s name; if two have the same name, the second gets (2).

Changing it later

• Detach from thread, on a sub-thread, takes it out of the thread and leaves it an ordinary tab.
• Go to thread, on a sub-thread, selects its thread.
• Stop being a thread, on a thread, ends it. Its sub-threads carry on as ordinary tabs.
• Ask before sending to sub-threads, on a thread, is a switch that’s on by default. Sending work and getting reports explains it. In the command palette it reads Stop asking before sending to sub-threads while it’s on.

In the command palette, Assign to thread: ‹name› has an entry for each thread you could join.

In the sidebar

A thread’s row has a thread icon before its name. Its tip says how many sub-threads it has, such as A thread, with 2 sub-threads. Its sub-threads sit right under it, indented.

Reordering keeps them together: Move up and Move down on a thread move it, with its sub-threads, past the next tab or thread, and on a sub-thread move it among its thread’s. A sub-thread dragged away comes back. When a thread’s sub-threads are working and nothing else needs saying, its second line reads Thread · 2 of 3 working.

The chevron on the group’s colored line, beside a thread’s name, folds its sub-threads away under it, with everything under them, and the thread’s row then counts them and shows the most urgent, such as ! for a sub-thread waiting on you. See Collapsing a tab.

Showing a thread with its sub-threads

Choose Thread → Show with its sub-threads on a thread to see it beside its sub-threads: the thread and its first sub-threads, as many as fit, each with its own conversation and composer. The command palette has Show the thread with its sub-threads. Split panes explains the panes.

See also

• What threads are
• The tab’s menu: every item in the menu.