Your first chat
After you set up AI and connect at least one integration, start the assistant:
toby chat
Bare toby (no subcommand) also opens chat. On macOS, you can also start chatting from the native Toby.app once it is installed.
Command-line syntax
| What you want | Command |
|---|---|
| Open chat and type your first message in the TUI | toby or toby chat |
| Open chat with an initial message | toby -p "summarize my unread email" or toby --prompt "…" |
| Scope to one integration from the shell | toby chat email "summarize unread from today" |
| One-shot answer in the terminal | toby chat --no-tui --prompt "quick question about my inbox" |
Mistyped commands — Unknown root commands (for example toby staatus or toby "summarize unread") are reported as errors. They do not launch chat with your text as a prompt. Use toby -p "…" or toby chat … when you mean to pass a prompt from the shell.
Root chat flags such as --debug, --no-tui, and --persona still work without the chat keyword (for example toby --debug). Inside toby chat, -p selects a persona; at the root, -p means prompt.
How chat uses integrations
All connected integrations (default) — Type your message normally. Toby merges tools from every connected chat integration (Email, Todoist, Slack, Jira, and so on).
One integration — Start your message with the integration name in the TUI, or pass it on the command line:
toby chat email summarize my unread email from today
Explicit set — Use --integration one or more times; remaining words are only the prompt:
toby chat --integration email --integration todoist "What should I focus on today?"
Inside the chat UI, type /integration to open a multi-select picker (Space toggles, Enter applies).
Toby can also answer questions about its own setup. Try prompts like “Which integrations are connected?”, “What tools can you use?”, “How do I set up Jira?”, or “What skills are installed?”
Web and URL reading
You can paste a URL and ask Toby to read it; the built-in fetchWebContent tool extracts the main readable page text without extra setup.
If you configure Web Search, Toby can also search the web from any chat session without selecting the integration explicitly.
Useful slash commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/help | List slash commands and shortcuts |
/config | Open the configure UI |
/connect | Connect an integration |
/disconnect | Disconnect an integration |
/integration | Choose which integrations are active in this session |
/listen | Start recording microphone and system audio in this chat |
/stop-listening | Stop, save, transcribe, and add the recording transcript as context |
/persona | Switch persona |
/skills | Open the skills manager |
/schedules | Open the schedules manager |
/restart-server | Restart the background server |
/upgrade | Stage the latest release |
/restart | Restart Toby, applying a staged upgrade when available |
/new | Start a new chat session |
/sessions | Browse saved sessions |
/exit | Leave chat |
Press Shift+Tab to cycle personas without leaving chat.
Record audio into chat
On macOS, /listen starts a recording inside the active chat session. /stop-listening saves the recording, transcribes it, and adds the transcript as context for the assistant so you can ask for a summary or action items. It uses the same helper and permissions as toby listen.
Single-turn mode (no TUI)
For a one-shot answer in the terminal:
toby chat --no-tui --prompt "quick question about my inbox"
You can also combine a root prompt with --no-tui:
toby -p "quick question about my inbox" --no-tui
Debug pretreatment (optional)
To see which skills were selected and other pipeline details:
toby chat --debug
The chat status line can show context-window usage as ctx N% when Toby knows the selected model’s context size. Pretreatment can also select the most relevant tools for the prompt and assign a short session name automatically.