Docking documents with chat
Edit a document and ask the assistant about it side-by-side.
The AI chat panel is normally a side panel that you open with ⌘/. By default it
overlays whatever you were looking at, which is fine for quick questions but
awkward when you actually want the assistant to help with the document you're
editing.
Docking solves this. You drag a document tab onto the chat panel and it sits side-by-side: editor on the left, chat on the right. You can edit and ask in parallel, and the assistant always has full context of what's open.
How to dock
- Open the chat panel⌘/ or the sparkle icon
The chat slides in from the right.
- Find the document tab
At the top of any open document there's a small tab pill with the document title.
- Drag the tab onto the chat panel
A blue drop-zone appears across the panel. Release.
- The view splits
Editor on the left, chat on the right. Both have full functionality.
Why this matters
Three things that aren't possible without docking:
- Edit while the assistant analyses. Add a paragraph, then ask "is this consistent with the data table above?". The assistant sees the change.
- Cite straight from the document. Ask the assistant to refer to "the protocol step about plasma collection" and it knows exactly which block you mean.
- Keep the chat history visible. Long analytical sessions stay in view while you work, instead of vanishing behind a closed panel.
Common patterns
- Drafting a methods section
- Dock the protocol document. Ask "draft a methods paragraph from this protocol" — the assistant uses the actual step content.
- Reviewing analysis
- Dock a study summary document with embedded charts. Ask "are there any timepoints with unusual variance in the IFN-γ table above?" — the assistant queries the table directly.
- Migrating a SOP
- Dock an old free-form document. Ask "rewrite this as a locked protocol template with explicit hazard tags" — the assistant proposes a structured replacement.
- Cross-doc reasoning
- Dock document A, ask the assistant to compare it to document B. Confirm by reading both side-by-side.
Undocking
Drag the chat tab off the panel, or press ⌘/ to collapse the panel back to its
overlay form. Your conversation history is preserved.
Tips
On large monitors the docked layout works at any width. On 13-inch laptops you get the best experience by collapsing the sidebar with ⌘B first.
You can dock more than one document — they stack as tabs above the editor pane. The assistant will always assume the focused tab is the "current" document unless you reference another by name.