# Assistant tabs

The Assistant's tabs work like a browser's. Each one owns a conversation, the follow-up chain that conversation produced, the record it is pinned to, any draft in progress, the files attached to it and its scroll position. Nothing crosses between them, so two pieces of work can be open at once without either one contaminating the other's answers.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/home, #/inbox
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/tabs/

## What a tab owns

| Kept in the tab | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Conversation | The messages you and the Assistant have exchanged in this tab, and nothing from any other tab |
| Follow-up chain | The thread of steps a request produced — each answer's successor rather than a flat log |
| Record | The person, company, deal, thread or call this tab is working on |
| Draft | A reply or document in progress, still editable, not yet sent or saved anywhere else |
| Files | What you attached here; a file attached in one tab is not context in another |
| Scroll position | Where you were reading, restored when you come back |

The list is deliberately more than 'the messages'. A conversation on its own would still let a record pinned in one tab quietly steer an answer in another, which is the failure this design exists to prevent. If the tab labelled *Acme Traders renewal* is pinned to that company, an answer in the tab beside it about a different account is drawn from that account only.

## Why not one long thread

A single conversation forces every request through the same accumulating context. Ask about one customer's overdue invoices, then about a prospect's research, and the second answer is being produced beside the first — with the model free to treat the earlier subject as still relevant. That is a small annoyance in a chat toy and a real problem in a workspace where the answer decides who gets contacted.

It also solves an ordinary working problem. Most days involve two or three unfinished things at once. Tabs let you leave one half-done, deal with an interruption in a second, and return to the first with its record, its files and its scroll exactly as they were, instead of re-establishing the subject from memory.

> **Note** Tabs are separation, not privacy. Every tab belongs to the same workspace and the same you, and every action any of them runs lands in the same decision log. Nothing is hidden from an administrator by being in a different tab.

## Working with them

- Open a new tab for a new subject rather than changing subject in an old one — it costs a click and makes both threads readable later.
- Name a tab after the thing it is about if you keep more than two open. A row of identical labels is the point at which tabs stop helping.
- Pin the record before asking about it, so the tab's answers are anchored to one account rather than to whatever screen you happened to open it from.
- Close a tab when the work is done. Its conversation is finished with; anything that mattered is already a record, a memory or a follow-up.

Because the panel has one scroller, moving between tabs does not rearrange the layout around you. Chat, Needs You, Standing instructions, Memory and Files stay in the same place — a sidebar at 600px and wider, the More menu below that — and only the content changes.

## Edge cases worth knowing

**A tab's record has changed since you opened it** — The record is re-read when it is used, not frozen at the moment you pinned it, so an answer reflects the current row. What can go stale is the conversation above it, which still describes the older state.
**You closed a tab with an unconfirmed action** — Nothing ran. A proposed action is not queued anywhere; discarding the tab discards the proposal with it.
**You closed a tab with a draft in it** — The draft was in the tab. If it mattered, saving it as a file or sending it makes it a record; leaving it in a tab does not.
**Two tabs are pinned to the same person** — Allowed and sometimes useful — one for the support case, one for the renewal. They still do not share context.

## Questions

### Do tabs survive a page reload?

The conversation belongs to the tab rather than to the panel being visible, so closing and reopening the panel returns you to where you were. An unconfirmed action and an unsaved draft are the two things that live only as long as the tab holding them.

### Is there a limit on how many I can open?

Connect's documentation does not record a fixed maximum, so this page does not state one. The practical limit is your own: past about four, the labels stop being distinguishable and finding the right tab costs more than reopening the subject would.

### Can I move a conversation from one tab to another?

No. A tab is the container for its conversation. What you can do is carry the result across — a follow-up, a memory or a file created in one tab is a workspace record and is visible from anywhere, including another tab.

## Related

- [Connect Assistant](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/)
- [Opening the Assistant](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/opening/)
- [Working on one record](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/record-context/)
- [Conversation history](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/history/)
- [The Assistant on a phone and on a wide screen](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/assistant/assistant-responsive/)
- [Relationships in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/relationships/)

## What this page is based on

- `docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md` §8 — tabs, per-tab state, the single scroller
- Connect capability registry (`docs-source/facts.py`) — `assistant_tabs`