The chat is the office, in writing.

Replies stream in as markdown.

The boss's answer types out character-by-character on a single bubble — no spinner in a corner, no batched dump at the end. The transcript is glamour-rendered, so bold, lists, and code fences format and wrap inside the panel instead of bleeding through the chrome.

While the turn runs, the thinking transcript unfolds in real time above the reply — then folds itself away when the answer lands, so a finished chat reads clean.

Between the two, every tool the boss touches leaves a one-line row in the transcript. The working detail stays visible, not hidden behind a spinner.

boss chat — markdown reply streaming, thinking expanded (ctrl+t)

A compact marker can restore the boss's recent context.

If a boss has lost its place after context compaction, either backend can emit ⟦recent-messages⟧ on its own line. The office removes that marker from the reply, collects the 20 most recent user, boss, and tool transcript entries, and sends them back as a bounded synthetic follow-up. It is a read-only recovery path: no tool runs and no permission prompt.

To request a different amount, the boss writes ⟦recent-messages: N⟧ on its own line. N is clamped from 1 to 50, and a reply can request recovery only once. The synthetic follow-up is capped at 12KB while preserving the newest content; the chat confirms the handoff as context: sent N recent messages to the boss.

Sub-agent work hangs off the transcript as threads.

When the office dispatches sub-agents, their labor renders as opencode-style threads right in the chat. A live thread is one collapsed row — a braille spinner, the thread title, a running tool-call count — with a ↳ sneak row previewing the latest action underneath. When the work returns, the row rolls up to a ✓ summary.

ctrl+g expands the full thread inline in the chat, and every tool call inside carries its own per-call ↳ diff — line numbers, full-row red/green tints, inline syntax; the same diff the git tab shows. ctrl+d expands or collapses diff blocks on the spot. The full toggle table lives in keys and slash commands.

work threads — live rows, ↳ sneaks, per-call diffs

ctrl+f takes one thread fullscreen.

Clicking a thread's frame — the header, its collapsed sneak, or an expanded thread's closing summary — swaps the transcript for a nested focus pane: that agent's complete transcript (every tool call, think body, and per-call diff you can click open) scrolling at the frame width, live-pulsed while it works. ctrl+f opens the pane without the mouse — the most recently expanded thread wins, else any live one.

The statusbar reads esc · ctrl+f back to office, and leaving returns the parent transcript underneath byte-identical — scroll, expansions, and your half-typed draft untouched.

thread focus — one worker, fullscreen, live; esc back

What this doesn't do yet.

Floats are a lane of their own — permission asks and boss questions sit on top of this transcript. Permissions and questions covers them.