The composer

Write in the composer at the bottom. Enter sends; Shift+Enter starts a new line. It starts one line tall and grows with what you write, up to about ten lines, then scrolls. While it scrolls, its lines fade a little at the top or bottom edge where more of the message runs on past it.

A session’s panel and its transcript are in The transcript, and sessions and the board in Sessions and the board. Files you send with a message are in Attaching files.

The composer stands over the foot of the transcript. Scrolled up, the transcript’s lines fade out as they reach the composer’s top edge, wherever it has grown to, and run on behind its glass. They fade the same way under the header when there’s more above. The newest line always stays just above the composer.

The transcript keeps to its newest line as the agent writes, until you scroll up. Whatever you send from the composer, a message, one that waits for the turn to end or a command, brings it back to the newest line, however far up you’d read, and it keeps to it again as the reply comes. A message sent from your phone or another window leaves this one where you’re reading.

• Its toolbar holds, from left to right: the rephrase button (see Rephrasing a message), Attach files (see Attaching files), Commands (/, see Conversation commands), the permission mode (see Permission modes), the model with its effort where the agent has one, the agent’s own settings, the context ring, and Send. Where the toolbar has no room for each, the agent’s settings fold into one Settings menu.
• With Claude Code the settings hold fast mode and the output style, and with Codex fast mode and its Daybreak unless your Codex turns it off (see Configuration).
• While a turn runs, Stop shows beside Send and ends the turn in progress. While only a plan waits for you, Stop stands in Send’s place until you write something or add a file, and sending a message sets the plan aside (see Questions and plans).
• A message you send while the agent works goes as the agent can take it (see Sending while the agent works).
• Files can go on their own, with nothing typed.
• Right-click in the composer, or in any text field, for Cut, Copy, Paste and Select All. On macOS, a word underlined as misspelled first offers its spelling suggestions, each replacing it, then Add to Dictionary.
• When a message can’t be sent, Send is held, and a line under the box says why.
• What you’ve written belongs to the session’s composer: opening another session lets it go, and quitting with a message being written asks first.
• Above the composer, the agent’s background tasks show while any run, closed under a heading that counts them until you open it, each with how long it has run, its Output (“No output yet.” until there’s some) and Stop (see Configuration).

Rephrasing a message

The stardust button at the left of the composer’s toolbar has the session’s agent rewrite what you’ve written, in a run of its own beside the session. The conversation never sees it, and a turn under way goes on.

• A click runs this computer’s choice, Rephrase to start with, which rewrites your words without adding to them. Its tooltip names it, and Settings changes it.
• The arrow beside it offers both: Rephrase, and Rephrase and slightly enrich, which adds a little where your message leaves something out. The one a click runs is marked Default.
• While it runs, the stardust breathes in the running colour (it holds still where your system asks for less motion, or while Moontors isn’t the window in front), the message can’t be edited, and Commands (/) and Send wait. A click on the button stops it, and leaves your words as they were.
• The new words, asked for as plain text with no Markdown formatting, take the place of yours in the box, and Undo (Cmd+Z on macOS, Ctrl+Z elsewhere) brings yours back. The files and the quoted row stay. If you’ve moved on to type somewhere else meanwhile, the new words go in without taking you away from it. Should your words change before the answer comes, as when Edit puts a waiting message back in the box, the new words are dropped and yours stay.
• When it fails, a line under the box says why, and your words stay as they were. An agent that hasn’t answered after two minutes is stopped.
• It’s held while nothing is written, while a command (/…) is, while a message is on its way, and while the session’s agent can’t run, as when it’s signed out.
• The agent runs on the session’s model with no tool, MCP server, plugin or hook, and nothing of the run is kept: no conversation is saved, and the session’s history doesn’t show it. It uses your account as a short message does.

Sending while the agent works

Send whatever you like while a turn runs: nothing waits for the agent to be free first. While a turn runs, Send’s tooltip says where what you send goes:

• Send into the turn, with Claude Code and Codex, while nothing waits for the turn’s end: the agent takes your message in as it works. Until it does, your message shows last in the transcript, “Waits for the agent to take it in”, after what the agent is doing; Claude Code takes it in once the tool it’s running ends. Then it shows where the agent took it in, among the turn’s rows. If the turn ends just as you send it, Codex’s waits for the turn’s end, as below. Claude Code may instead start a turn from it.
• Send when the turn ends, with Gemini CLI, which takes one message a turn, for a command with any agent, and for any message while something already waits, so nothing goes before what you sent first: it shows last in the transcript, “Waits for the turn to end”, then goes once the turn ends.

What waits for the turn’s end

• A command waits for the turn’s end, whether the agent runs it, as /review, /init or one of your own, or Moontors does, as /compact or /clear. The / list says “Runs when the turn ends” beside each while a turn runs. Those that only open or show something, such as /mcp, /diff or /status, and /btw, /rename and /goal, run at once.
• /rewind, /branch, /cd and /add-dir open their list or folder picker at once, and what you pick waits for the turn’s end, its row saying what it’ll do: the prompt a rewind or a branch goes back to before, or the folder a move goes to or an add lets the agent reach. /subtask, /recap and /setup-default-sandbox wait as you typed them. A waiting /rewind puts its prompt back in the composer at once, so what you send next goes after the rewind. A /branch that waited isn’t opened for you: once it’s made, the transcript says so, with Open the branch.
• Fix, from Claude Code’s /usage (see /status), waits as a message would, its row showing the message it’ll send, and the effort it sets first. It joins nothing, and nothing joins it.
• Each one waiting is a row of its own, last in the transcript, in the order you sent them. They go one at a time: each once the one before it has ended its turn, or, as /clear, is done.
• A message sent just after another waiting message joins it, after a blank line, with its files. A reply’s quote goes with its own words. A command joins nothing.
• Each waiting row has Edit, which takes it out of the queue and puts it in the composer after anything you’ve written, with its files and the row it replied to, and Discard, which takes it away. A file it can no longer bring back, as one kept too long, is named above the composer.
• Stop ends the turn in progress and keeps nothing back. A message you sent into the turn that the agent hadn’t taken in yet goes first, as the next turn’s own, and shows where the agent takes it in. Then what waits goes, in order.
• If the turn ends with the agent failing, what waits stays where it is, each row saying “Waits: the agent stopped”. Send now, on the first row, sends it, starting the agent again. Sending anything else lets the queue go on too, as does a turn that ends by itself.
• If your sign-in ends, each row asks you to sign in to the agent, as “Waits: sign in to Claude Code”, and what waits goes once you sign in again.
• While what waits stays this way, Moontors’ background service keeps it with the window closed, and an update’s restart or Remove Moontors’ Data… asks first, as for a message being written. An update you download and install yourself loses it, as the update notice says first; otherwise only the service being killed, or crashing itself, does.
• Each is checked again when its turn comes. One Moontors can’t send or carry out then, as one whose files come to more than Gemini CLI takes, or a rewind to before a /clear that went ahead of it, stays first, the rows saying the agent stopped, and the transcript says why: Edit it or Discard it.
• Archiving or deleting the session takes what waits with it.
• A message sent within a turn is part of that turn, so Rewind and Branch go back to before the turn’s own prompt, not to it.

The model picker

The toolbar has two buttons side by side, each opening its menu: the model, and its effort where the model has a choice. Each lists only what the agent offers, so a model’s menu holds only the efforts it takes.

• The agent’s own default is marked (default), as Opus 5.5 is on Claude Code, and checked while you’ve chosen none; the button says so too. Choosing it follows the agent’s default as it moves, as when your account’s default model changes. Any other choice stays as you chose it.
• Where the agent hasn’t said which is its default, the menu starts with Default model or Default effort instead, as Claude Code’s default effort is known only once the session’s agent has started on the model.
• While a Codex turn runs, a model or effort you pick shows as chosen at once, with a clock beside it that says “Takes effect when this turn ends.”, and switches when the turn ends, as a mode does (see Switching). Claude Code and Gemini CLI switch at once, even mid-turn. A change shows in the transcript as a quiet row.
• When no model can be picked now, both buttons are dimmed and a note beside them says why. A pick the session can’t take, such as a model without fast mode while fast mode is on, is refused, and the reason shows above the composer.