Chat: ask your repo anything

Chat is a conversation with your repository's committed history. Because Merget keeps the prompts, transcripts, and changes behind every goal, prompt, and step, you can ask questions a plain commit log could never answer:

• "Why did we switch to JWT?"
• "What changed in the auth refactor, and when?"
• "Which goal touched the payment code, and who worked on it?"

The answers come back with citations into your actual history, so you can jump straight from a claim to the work that backs it up.

Chat answers from your repo's committed history and nothing else: it doesn't search the web or read anything outside Merget. It also doesn't see cost or token numbers, so for spend and usage use the Stats view.

Where it lives

Chat is the left panel of the repo window. The toolbar at the top switches that panel between chat (the Merget Agent button) and the built-in terminals for your coding tools. The rest of the window (Home, Map, Stats, Editor) stays put while you chat.

Asking a question

Type into the box at the bottom and press Enter (Shift+Enter for a new line). While the answer is being worked out you'll see a Thinking indicator, and as the agent digs through your history its activity shows up as a small card of steps it's taking. The card stays expanded while the answer streams in, then collapses to a one-line summary you can click to reopen.

Cited sources

Answers cite the goals, prompts, and steps they drew from. Citations appear two ways:

• Numbered chips inline in the answer text.
• A Sources list under the answer (long lists start collapsed; click "Show more" to expand).

Click any citation and Merget navigates the Map to that node: the view pans to the goal and the detail panel opens on the cited prompt or step. The chat isn't summarizing from memory; every source is a real committed object you can inspect.

If the GIF above doesn't load: clicking a citation switches the main view to the Map, centers the cited goal, and opens its detail panel scrolled to the prompt or step that was cited.

Pointing chat at the right context

By default chat can range over the whole repo. To steer it, attach specific nodes as context, which appear as small removable pills above the send button:

• Select a goal on the Map and it becomes the chat's current focus. Selecting a different goal replaces it.
• Click the + button in the input box to pick a goal from a list.
• Right-click a prompt or step in the history detail panel and choose Add to chat context to pin something more specific than a whole goal.

Remove a pill by clicking the small x on it when you're done. Behind the scenes, pinned context is attached to your message as a mention of that exact node, so the answer is grounded in the history you pointed at.

If a terminal or chat reply contains a URL, you can also select it and open it in the built-in browser without leaving the window.

Sessions

Conversations are organized into named sessions, shown as tabs at the top of the panel. A new session takes its name from your first message; you can rename it, start a fresh one with the + tab, or delete one you're done with. Sessions stick around: close the app, come back tomorrow, and your conversations reload where you left them.

What you need

Chat works when three things are true:

• You're signed in. If not, sending a message returns a "Not logged in" notice in the reply.
• You're online. Answers are produced by Merget's service; with no connection, the request fails and the error appears in the reply bubble.
• The repo is registered with your account. A repo that was never set up with Merget's service reports that no repository is configured for chat; see Creating your first repo.

Failures are never silent: whatever went wrong shows up as a notice attached to the message you sent, and you can retry once it's fixed.

Next: Terminals | Related: The Map | Sync & privacy