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Chatting

This page covers the chat view: composing and sending messages, watching replies stream in, and working with the message actions that NeoTavern provides.

Sending Messages​

The composer sits at the bottom of the chat canvas. Type a message and press Enter to send; press Shift+Enter for a new line. Your message appears instantly, and the reply streams into the view in batches of at most 30 UI updates per second. You can scroll through history while a reply streams — auto-scroll only follows you while you stay at the bottom, and a "new message" action appears after you scroll up manually.

While a reply is generating, the main composer button becomes Stop. Stopping keeps the text received so far as an explicitly marked incomplete response. A dropped connection offers a reconnect and never creates a duplicate message.

Your draft is saved per chat, so switching away and back never loses what you were typing.

Swipes (Alternative Messages)​

Every assistant message can hold several alternative replies, called swipes. A pager under the message shows the count as N/M with previous and next arrows; clicking the arrows cycles through the variants without losing any of them. Swipe history is preserved and non-destructive.

Regenerate​

The regenerate action rewrites the latest assistant message in place: a new reply streams into the existing bubble, and the previous text becomes another variant in the swipe pager. If generation fails or is stopped, the old text stays on disk untouched.

Editing Messages​

Open the edit action on a message to change its text. The inline editor saves with Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Enter on macOS) and cancels with Escape. Edits are non-destructive: the previous content is archived into the message's edit history, from which you can restore it at any time. If the message changed elsewhere while you were editing, the editor keeps your draft and shows a conflict notice instead of overwriting silently.

Message Actions​

The action bar on each message is always visible, not hover-only:

  • Copy the raw message text.
  • Edit the message.
  • Regenerate the last assistant reply.
  • Swipe through variants.
  • Create a checkpoint or branch: a snapshot of the chat frozen at that message, copied into a child chat. Use checkpoints to explore storylines without touching the main conversation.
  • Delete the message. Deletion moves chats to a trash state rather than destroying them instantly.

Plugins can add their own actions to the same bar, subject to the permissions you granted them. See Extensions.

Keyboard Control​

The whole chat flow works from the keyboard: Tab and Shift+Tab move focus, Escape closes the topmost panel or dialog, and the swipe pager, checkpoint links, and message actions are all focusable controls. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list.