Agents in chat
How the agents picker works in Chat — which agents appear, what "Visible in chat" controls, one-shot versus sticky agents, switching mid-thread, and sub-agent calls.
3 min read
Picking an agent in Chat is the difference between asking a generic Assistant and asking something the org has shaped for a domain. The agents picker is the most-used control in the chat; the rules behind which agent appears, when an agent persists, and what happens when you switch mid-chat are the subject of this page.
The agents picker
Click the agent chip on the chat (its accessible name is Select agent) and the picker opens with Search agents at the top. The list shows Auto — Tale routes each message to the best-fitting agent — followed by every agent you have access to that is marked Visible in chat; coding agents get their own Coding agents section when any are visible. Agents without that toggle exist in the org but never surface here, which keeps the list short. Browse automations at the bottom leads to the Automations catalog — new agents arrive as part of an automation you install.
"Visible in chat"
Every agent has a Visible in chat toggle on the General page of its editor. Turning it off does not disable the agent — automations and workflows can still call it, and sub-agent calls from other agents still work — it just hides the agent from the chat picker. The reasoning: organisations end up with dozens of agents the average user never picks (utility agents called by other agents, agents bound to a specific workflow), and surfacing them all would drown the everyday picks.
One-shot versus sticky
Picking an agent before the first message in a chat makes it sticky — every subsequent message in the same chat goes to the same agent. Picking an agent mid-chat applies it to the next message and everything after, until you switch again.
Switching mid-thread
The agent's knowledge and tools change with the picker, but the conversation history does not. The new agent reads everything that came before — your messages and the previous agent's replies — and continues from there. This is useful for handoffs: a triage agent answers the first message, you switch to a specialist for follow-up, and the specialist has the full context without anyone copy-pasting.
Sub-agent calls
An agent's instructions can include a sub-agent tool; when it does, the primary agent can delegate part of the work without you picking anything. Sub-agent calls render in the reply as collapsed tool calls — you see what was delegated and what came back, not a full second conversation. Delegation rules and the loop-prevention model live on Agent delegation.
When to reach for each shape
| Use … when | Chat | Projects | Conversations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal task, one-off question | ✓ | ||
| Shared workspace across a team, recurring threads | ✓ | ||
| Inbound from a contact channel (email, webhook) | ✓ |
Where this fits
Agents in Chat is the user-facing half of the agents story — what the picker does, what shows up, how stickiness works. The build-facing half is Agent concepts: the four knobs that determine what an agent does once picked. If you came here to build the agent you wish were in the picker, that is the next read.