Asking about selected text
Select text on a screen and the selection travels with your next question, so the Assistant answers about that passage rather than the whole record. What is sent is the text you highlighted and the identifier of the record it came from — not the page around it, and not anything you did not select.
What travels and what does not#
| Sent | Not sent |
|---|---|
| The characters you highlighted | The rest of the message, thread or document |
| The record the selection came from, as an identifier | The rendered page, its layout or a screenshot |
| The route you were on | Other records visible in the same list |
| Nothing else about the selection | Formatting, styling or hidden HTML around it |
The identifier is verified before use, exactly as any screen context is: it is re-read inside your workspace, and if it does not resolve the selection is treated as loose text with no record behind it. That is the honest outcome — the words are still there, the claim about where they came from is not asserted.
The questions it is good at#
- 'What is this asking for?' on a long inbound message where the actual request is one clause in the fourth paragraph.
- 'Is this consistent with what we told them before?' on a claim in a thread — the Assistant checks the passage against the relationship's history rather than against the whole thread.
- 'Turn this into a follow-up.' A commitment buried in prose becomes a dated row with a reason, proposed for your confirmation.
- 'Explain this line.' On a call transcript, where the surrounding turns are noise and one sentence is the point.
In each of those the selection is doing work that a pinned record cannot. Pinning says *which* account; selecting says *which words*. They combine well — a pinned tab plus a selection asks a narrow question inside a known subject.
Where it goes wrong#
- The selection is too small
- Three words out of a sentence can invert the meaning of what was written. Select the clause, not the fragment.
- The selection is the whole page
- A selection that covers everything is the same as no selection, minus the record's structure. Ask about the record instead.
- The passage is an instruction from a stranger
- Text inside an inbound message is content, not a command. Connect reports what it says; it does not obey it. See Prompt injection arrives as ordinary business mail.
- The selection came from a file preview
- That is a question about the file. Attaching it or using the file tools reads the whole document rather than the visible fragment — see Working with files in the Assistant.
A worked example#
On a thread from a fictional contact at Acme Traders, highlight the sentence 'we would need delivery before the end of the quarter'.
Result The selection is attached to your next question along with the thread's identifier.
Ask: 'have we committed to this anywhere?'
Result The Assistant checks that passage against the relationship's follow-ups, earlier threads and memory, and answers with what it found — including 'nothing recorded', which is a real answer.
Ask: 'make a follow-up for it, two days before the quarter ends'.
Result A proposed action arrives with the person, the channel, the date and the reason filled in. Nothing is written until you confirm it.
Questions#
Does selecting text send the whole message?
No. Only the characters you highlighted travel, plus the identifier of the record they came from. The Assistant can still read the rest of that record through its own tools, but that is a separate, recorded read rather than something the selection smuggles in.
Can I select from a list of conversations rather than inside one?
You can highlight anything on screen, but a selection spanning several records is loose text: the identifier behind it is ambiguous, so the answer is about the words rather than about any one conversation. Open the record you mean first.
Is my selection kept afterwards?
It stays in the tab's conversation as part of the question you asked, which is how the exchange still reads sensibly later. It does not become memory, a knowledge source or a fact unless you deliberately make it one.