Chat

Chat is the central hub where all ELITEA capabilities come together. It provides a conversational interface where you can interact with AI models, agents, pipelines, skills, modules, toolkits and MCP servers — all in one place, using natural language. Each chat is an independent dialogue session. You can refer to earlier messages within the same chat, but context is not shared between separate chats. All chats are securely stored on the ELITEA server and are accessible from any device via the Chat menu.

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Creating Chats

There are three ways to create a new chat:

• By the Create button in the left sidebar — the quickest way to start a new conversation.
• From a folder — create a chat directly inside a folder.
• By duplicating a chat — reuse an existing chat’s participants and settings.

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Chat Structure

In ELITEA, all chats are located in the dedicated Chat page that includes the CHATS sidebar on the left, the PARTICIPANTS panel and Context Budget widget on the right, and the main chat area in the center.

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Main Chat Area

The main chat area contains the chat header, message history, and message input toolbar. The message input toolbar is located at the bottom of the chat area. It includes the input field and associated controls:

No.	Element	Description
1	Message input field	Enter your message here.
2	+	Attach files, turn on modules, add participants (agents, pipelines, toolkits, MCPs, users) or invite users.
3	Model selector	Choose which LLM model responds in this chat.
4	Model settings	Configure the parameters of the selected model.
5	Voice input	Dictate your message using the microphone.
6	Speaking mode	Turn on hands-free Speaking Mode for a fully spoken chat.

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Message Input Field

Type your message in the input field, then press Enter to send it, or Shift+Enter to insert a line break without sending. Type @ followed by a name to mention a user, or # followed by a name to mention an agent, pipeline, toolkit or MCP. While the AI is generating a response, the input field is disabled — select Stop generating to interrupt the response early. Stopping restores your last message to the input field so you can edit and resend it.

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Model Selector & Settings

You can use the model selector dropdown at the bottom of the chat to select the LLM that will respond to your messages. The dropdown lists all LLMs available in your project as well as the Auto option that allows ELITEA to select the model automatically. Each model in the list can carry a capability label — an icon shown next to its name indicating that it supports image analysis or reasoning: Once you select a model, its name is displayed on the selector button. Next to the model selector, you can see the Settings (⚙️) icon where you can fine-tune the response generation.

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Attachments

You can attach files and images directly to chats for AI-powered analysis. This enables multimodal interactions where AI can process visual content, documents, and data files alongside text-based queries. You can attach files to a chat by clicking the + icon in the chat input toolbar and selecting Attach Files. You can also drag-and-drop files directly onto the chat input area or paste files from your clipboard. You can also enable attachments for agents and pipelines. How Attachments Work Every file you attach is automatically uploaded to the default attachments bucket in Artifacts — no manual configuration is required.

• Images are sent directly to the LLM for real-time vision analysis.
• Non-image files (documents, code, data) are indexed into a vector database and retrieved via semantic search.

Attachment Limits Attachments in Different Chats

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Modules

Modules enhance your chats without requiring external integrations: Default modules are configured by project administrators in Settings, General > Default Modules. All team members can turn a module on or off for their own chats or agents at any time, regardless of the project default.

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Voice Capabilities

ELITEA lets you interact with chat using your voice instead of (or alongside) typing:

• Voice Input — dictate your messages using the microphone; the transcript is inserted directly into the chat input.
• Text-to-Speech — have the AI’s responses read aloud, with playback controls and voice settings you can customize.
• Speaking Mode — hold a fully hands-free, spoken chat: ELITEA listens, sends, plays back the reply, and listens again automatically.

Voice capabilities rely on speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) models configured for your project, falling back to your browser’s built-in voice support when none is set up.

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CHATS Sidebar

In the CHATS sidebar, you can view all your chats, organized by time period or in folders. You can also create new chats, rename or delete existing ones, and manage folders. Public chats have the users icon to distinguish them from your private ones.

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Chats and Folders Organization

By default, chats are organized by time period: This automatic time-based sorting helps you quickly locate recent chats. Pinned chats will always appear at the very top, regardless of their creation date. Folders allow you to organize chats into custom groups. You can create folders, rename them, and move chats into them for better organization:

• Folders are displayed in the CHATS sidebar above the time-based sections.
• Within a folder, chats are sorted by their creation date.
• You cannot pin chats inside a folder but you can pin the folder itself.
• You can move chats between folders or back to the main list at any time.
• You can move a chat to a folder from its overflow menu or by simply dragging and dropping it into the desired folder.

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Chats and Folders Actions

In the CHATS sidebar, you can perform these actions from the chat’s overflow menu:

• Rename: Change the chat’s name. Available only to the chat’s creator.
• Move To: Move the chat into a folder, or back to the main list. If no folder exists, you can create one by clicking + New Folder. Not available while the chat is pinned.
• Playback: Simulate the chat without any engagement with models — a read-only replay with forward/backward navigation. Well suited for demos and for stepping through the chat turn by turn using the on-screen controls or the keyboard arrows (left/right).
• Duplicate: Create a new chat with the same privacy setting and participants as the original (participants added automatically by an agent are not copied). Messages and history are not copied.
• Make Public (Team projects only): Turn a private chat into a public one, visible and interactable by all project members.
• Restrict Access (Team projects only): Turn a public chat back to private, available only to the chat’s creator and project members directly specified by the chat’s creator.
• Share (Team and Public projects only): Copy a link to the chat for other project members who already have access.
• Share Externally: Generate a secure, read-only link so people outside ELITEA can view the chat.
• Manage Links: View, copy or revoke existing external share links. Shown only once at least one link has been created for the chat.
• Pin/Unpin: Pin the chat to the top of the list, or unpin it. Available to anyone who can see the chat; a chat already inside a folder cannot be pinned.
• Delete: Permanently remove the chat. Available only to the chat’s creator.

Unlike chat actions, all folder actions are restricted to the folder’s creator and, in team projects, also require the corresponding folder permission:

• New Chat: Create a new chat already assigned to the folder.
• Rename: Select Rename in the folder contextual menu, update the folder name and click the ✔ button to save your changes.
• Pin/Unpin: Select Pin on top in the folder contextual menu to keep the folder at the top of the CHATS sidebar for quicker access. Select Unpin to remove it from the top.
• Delete Folder: Permanently remove the folder. Deleting a folder will not delete the chats inside it — they will be moved back to the main CHATS list.

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PARTICIPANTS Panel

The PARTICIPANTS panel lists everyone and everything taking part in the current chat — agents, pipelines, toolkits and MCPs, as well as users in team projects.

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AI Participants

AI Participants are additional resources you can add to a chat to extend its capabilities: You can add any combination of agents, pipelines, toolkits and MCPs to a chat. ELITEA supports these actions on participants:

• Add: Add a participant using the + button in the message input toolbar or the # mention in the chat input field.
• Edit or view settings: Hover over a participant’s card and select Edit on a toolkit’s, pipeline’s or agent’s card to open it in the editor, or to view its settings if you do not have edit permission.
• Log out: For a connected remote MCP participant, select the log-out icon on its card to disconnect your account.
• Remove: Hover over a participant’s card and select the remove icon to remove it from the chat.

You can also collapse the panel to an icon-only view using the arrow button in the panel header.

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Users

In team projects, you can invite specific members of your team to collaborate in the chat. These users are invited from the + button in the message input toolbar and are listed in the PARTICIPANTS panel as Users: Unlike Agents, Pipelines, Toolkits and MCPs, Users are not added to a chat — they already have access through project membership. You can invite users for quicker and easier mentioning. Once a user is added to the chat, you can mention them by hovering over their card and selecting Mention, or by typing @ followed by their name in the chat input. This inserts an @username mention and addresses that user directly.

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Context Budget

The Context Budget widget displays real-time token usage metrics and allows you to configure how the system manages chat context as it approaches model token limits. Key Features

• Real-time Token Tracking: Monitor token consumption as you add messages to the chat
• Automatic Context Management: System automatically prunes old messages or generates summaries when approaching token limits
• Manual Optimization: Manually trigger context optimization when usage exceeds 100%
• Configurable Strategies: Choose between different pruning strategies (oldest_first, importance_based)
• Message Preservation: Configure how many recent messages are always protected from pruning
• Summarization: Enable automatic summarization of older messages to reduce token usage while preserving the chat context

Location and Views The widget appears in the bottom-left area of the PARTICIPANTS panel after you send the first message in a chat. The widget has three views that provide progressively more detailed information:

• Collapsed view: Shows a simple line indicating the token usage status (green for normal, orange for high usage)
• Compact view: Displays pruning strategy, message count, summaries count, and an expand button
• Configuration view: Allows you to set context management parameters, including max context tokens, message preservation, pruning strategy, and summarization settings

Configuration Parameters In the Context Budget widget, you can configure:

• Context Strategy & Token Management: Set max context tokens, preserve recent messages count, and pruning strategy
• Summarization: Enable/disable automatic summarization, configure summary instructions and trigger ratio
• System Messages: Manage system-level instructions and preservation settings

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Chat & Folder Visibility

Visibility and access rules for chats and folders depend on your project type — private or team. Private Project In a private project, only you can see, access and manage any chats and folders:

• Visibility: Only you (the creator) can see and access any chats and folders.
• AI participants: You can add agents, pipelines, toolkits and MCPs as AI participants.
• Users: You cannot add other users as participants.

Team Project Team projects support shared collaboration with configurable chat visibility.

• Folders: All folders in the project are visible to all team members.
• Chats: A chat is only visible to you if you are added to it as a participant (= user).
• Public chats: Chats can be marked as public — visible and interactable by all project members.
• Folder permissions: You cannot delete folders created by other users.

In both private and team projects, you can share a chat with users outside ELITEA through a secure, read-only link.

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Chat Responses and Outputs

Beyond plain text responses, ELITEA can ask you clarifying questions, suggest follow-up messages, and open entities directly from a chat response.

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Clarifying Questions

When you turn on the Ask User module for your chat in chat or an agent, LLM can pause and ask you one or more clarifying questions instead of guessing. These clarifying questions are shown as a card in the chat:

• Each question appears one at a time, with a stepper showing your position (e.g. 1/4) and arrows to move between questions.
• You can select one of the provided options, or use the free-text field to enter your own answer.
• Select Continue to submit your answer and move to the next question, or Skip to leave a question unanswered.

Your answers are sent directly back to the chat or agent to resume its run, not as a new chat message.

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Follow-up Suggestions

After a response, ELITEA can automatically suggest possible next messages, shown as clickable chips below the last message: Select a suggestion chip to insert its text into the message input field. The suggestion is not sent automatically — review or edit it, then send it like any other message.

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Conversation Starters

When you add a participant to a chat, the configured conversation starter for that participant will be automatically displayed in the chat. This will provide you with the immediate context and guide you on how to interact with each participant.

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Sensitive Action Authorization

When an agent or pipeline attempts to call a sensitive tool (such as deleting a repository, running a shell command, or dropping a database table), the conversation automatically pauses and displays an authorization card before anything is executed. Each sensitive tool invocation is reviewed independently. Authorizing one call does not auto-approve subsequent calls to the same tool — every invocation requires a separate user decision.

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Chat-Generated Entities

When an agent or pipeline generates an Agent, Pipeline, Toolkit, MCP, Skill or Project Context in a chat message, ELITEA automatically opens it in the Canvas side-by-side with the chat main area: All entities open in the matching editor with the generated content pre-filled. You can review and refine your agent, skill or other generated entity before saving it to your project. If ELITEA generated several entities in a single message, they are opened in separate tabs in the Canvas area. You can switch between them using the tabs at the top of the Canvas: Besides opening in Canvas, generated entities are displayed as chips in the chat message. You can interact with them directly from the chat:

• Hover over the chip to reveal the Edit and Delete icons.
• Select Edit to open the entity in its matching editor (Agent, Pipeline, Toolkit, Skill or Project Context editor) in a Canvas-side tab, where you can review and refine it before saving.
• Select Delete to discard the generated entity without creating it.

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Troubleshooting

Chat Not Loading

Check your network connection and refresh the page. If the issue persists, verify you have access permissions to the chat.

Cannot Add Participants

Ensure you have the necessary permissions. For team projects, verify that the participant (agent, pipeline, toolkit, or MCP) exists and is accessible to you.

Attachments Not Working

Verify that attachments are enabled for the chat and linked to an Artifact Toolkit. Check that your file format is supported and within size limits.

Modules Not Appearing

Ensure modules are enabled in the chat toolbar. For agents, verify the tools are configured in the agent’s TOOLS section.

Model Not Responding

Check that you have selected a valid LLM model and that your project has access to it. Verify token limits and model settings are correctly configured.

Context Budget Issues

Ensure the context_manager secret is set to true in Settings > Secrets. Check that you’ve sent at least one message for the widget to appear.

Canvas Editor Not Opening

Verify that the generated content is in a supported format (code, table, or Mermaid diagram). Check that you’re interacting with a compatible participant (agent, pipeline, or LLM model).

Shared Chat Link Not Working

Ensure the recipient has access to the team project and appropriate permissions. Verify the chat hasn’t been deleted or made private.

Voice Input Not Working

• Microphone icon is hidden: No server-side ASR model is configured and your browser does not support the Web Speech API. Check your browser compatibility or ask your administrator to configure an ASR model.
• “Microphone access denied.”: Allow microphone access in your browser settings and reload the page.
• “No microphone found.”: Connect a microphone and try again.
• “Voice input requires an internet connection.”: A network error occurred during server-side transcription. Check your connection and try again.

For further assistance, contact your platform administrator.