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Your first chat

After you set up AI and connect at least one integration, open Toby.app and start chatting.

Start a new chat​

Click Chat in the sidebar, then click the + button in the chat toolbar to start a new session. You will see an empty conversation with a prompt input at the bottom.

The + control is also a menu. Click the chevron to start a chat with a specific persona: Chat with Default Persona, Chat with Toby, Chat with Mailman, and any custom personas you have created. Choosing a named persona pins that persona on the new session; Chat with Default Persona (and a plain click on +) follows your current default.

Toby.app new chat session

Send a message​

Type your message in the input field at the bottom and press Enter to send. Responses stream in real time. Try a simple prompt like "How are you today?":

Toby.app chat with a simple prompt and streaming response

When a reply includes a markdown image (![name](https://…)), such as a product photo in a recommendation, Toby shows the picture inline. Click the picture to open it (or the linked page) in your browser.

When you ask Toby to write or generate a file, the reply includes a download chip. Download saves a copy to your Downloads folder; Open opens the file with its default app.

You can attach a PDF (or paste a PDF URL) and ask Toby to read or summarize it. This works even when the selected model cannot inspect files: Toby extracts the document’s text into the chat. Scanned image-only PDFs are not supported.

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?"

Switch personas​

Use the + menu in the chat toolbar to start a new session with a chosen persona. To change the default used by Chat with Default Persona, use the persona picker in the sidebar footer. See Personas for details.

Record audio into chat​

On macOS, you can start a recording inside the active chat session. The recording saves, transcribes, and adds the transcript as context so you can ask for a summary or action items. It uses the same helper and permissions as Listen mode.

Projects​

Open Projects in the sidebar to create a project or select one from the card view. From a project page you can start a scoped chat, add guidance (AGENTS.md), use project-local skills, and collect generated outputs. See Projects for details.

Next steps​