> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.peernotes.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Chat with the Peer Agent

> Chat with the PeerNotes Peer Agent about anything in your workspace — it questions and sharpens your thinking rather than replacing it.

**Chat** is a conversation with the [Peer Agent](/core-concepts/peer-agent), a thinking partner built into your workspace. Ask it anything and it responds with your workspace as context — your thoughts, notes, topics, and sources. It's designed around a simple belief: the best way to help you think is to ask better questions, not to hand you someone else's words.

Chat is one way to work with the Peer Agent — the same AI participant you can also [tag in a comment](/core-concepts/peer-agent#tag-it-in-a-comment) on a thought, note, or source.

## Start a conversation

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open Chat">
    Select **Chat** in the sidebar. Your previous conversations are listed on the left, so you can pick up an earlier thread or start fresh.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Ask your assistant">
    Type into the **Ask your assistant…** box. Ask about your own thinking ("What have I been capturing about onboarding lately?"), a source you added, or a draft you're developing.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Keep the thread">
    Each conversation is saved per workspace. Long-running threads — a project, a book you're working through — can live as their own conversations you return to over time.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## A thinking partner, not a ghostwriter

Most AI writing tools offer to write things for you. The PeerNotes assistant takes the opposite approach: the goal isn't to produce text, it's to improve *yours*.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Critical questions" icon="circle-question">
    Ask the assistant to read a draft note and it surfaces the questions a careful reader would ask — the ones you need to answer before you share it.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Assumption spotting" icon="magnifying-glass">
    It flags claims doing a lot of work without much support, so you can decide whether to back them up or rethink them.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Workspace recall" icon="clock-rotate-left">
    The assistant knows what's in your workspace. Use it to resurface thoughts you captured weeks ago that bear on what you're writing now.
  </Card>

  <Card title="On-demand, not intrusive" icon="comment">
    You invite the assistant in when you want it. It doesn't monitor your writing or offer unsolicited feedback.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

<Tip>
  The assistant is most useful on notes where you have a real point to make but aren't sure it holds up yet. Bring it a draft you'd want a thoughtful colleague to read before you share it with the team.
</Tip>

## Ask in context instead

When your question is about a specific passage, you don't need to open chat at all. Add a comment on the thought, note, or source, type `@`, and pick **PeerNotes Agent** — it reads the item and replies in the thread, keeping the question and answer attached to the spot they're about. See [Tag it in a comment](/core-concepts/peer-agent#tag-it-in-a-comment).

## The agent behind the scenes

Chat is the conversation you start; the [Peer Agent](/core-concepts/peer-agent) also works continuously in the background:

* **Organizing** — clustering your new thoughts into [topics](/core-concepts/topics) as you capture them
* **Connecting** — linking related thinking across your workspace so themes surface on their own

The result is a workspace that gets more organized the more you use it — without you doing the organizing.

<Info>
  Chat works within one workspace at a time. Switch workspaces and it follows, with that workspace's content as context. What the Peer Agent may do with your content is set in [Preferences → AI](/features/preferences#ai).
</Info>

## Related

* [Peer Agent](/core-concepts/peer-agent) — what the agent is, and tagging it in comments
* [Connect your agent](/features/mcp) — reach your workspace from Claude, Cowork, Codex, or Copilot
* [AI editor](/features/ai-editor) — AI help inside the note editor
* [Search](/features/search) — jump straight to an item instead of asking