BTW Aside

The btw button lets you send a short mid-turn message to the agent while it is working. The agent replies briefly, and the exchange appears inline as a compact box — separate from the main chat transcript.

How it works

1. While the agent is running and not actively streaming text, a btw button appears between the voice and send buttons.
2. Click it to open a small compose popover with a /btw prefix chip.
3. Type a short question or note and press Enter (or click the send icon).
4. The message is steered to the agent mid-turn. The next burst of assistant text is captured as the BTW reply and shown in a compact inline box.

The agent keeps working on the original task — the aside does not start a new turn.

Availability

The btw button is visible when all of the following are true:

• A chat session is selected.
• The agent status is Running.
• The workspace is local (not a remote connection).

The button is disabled when:

• A BTW modal is already open.
• Mid-turn steering is already in progress.
• A BTW capture window is already active.
• The agent is actively streaming text (content is flowing).

Capture window

After a successful BTW submission, a bounded capture window opens. Assistant text deltas are diverted into the BTW response buffer instead of the main streaming output. The capture window closes when any of these occur:

• A tool-use block starts.
• The active turn finishes.
• 500 characters have been captured.
• 15 seconds elapse from submission.
• Another BTW is submitted for the same session.

Once the capture closes, subsequent text flows back into the normal transcript.

Inline exchange box

BTW messages render as a compact box in the chat transcript instead of a normal user-message row. The box shows:

• A muted btw label.
• The user’s question (with the /btw prefix removed).
• The captured agent response, if any.
• A spinner while the capture window is still open.
• “No response captured.” if the window closed before any text arrived.

Limitations (v1)

• Local only — BTW is not available for remote workspaces. The underlying mid-turn steering path is local-only today.
• Ephemeral — BTW metadata (which messages are asides, captured responses) is not persisted to the database. On app reload, BTW messages appear as normal user messages.
• Plain text only — captured responses are treated as plain text. Code blocks and rich formatting are not rendered specially.

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Original source: utensils.io/claudette