Ask

Ask Claude a side question without adding it to the chat.

Type a question in the Ask pane, or run /ask <question>. Claude answers in the background, in the pane. The main conversation never sees the question or the answer, so it doesn't fill up the context.

The answer comes from a fork of the session. The fork reads the whole conversation, so Claude knows what you are working on. The prompt cache serves that history, so a question costs little. If the session has no reply yet, the question goes to a plain Sonnet call instead.

The main conversation never sees the pane, so each question also brings the last three answered questions from the pane with it. A follow-up like "any others?" then knows what Claude already said. Long answers are cut short so this stays small.

Use it

The pane reads like a chat. The question box sits at the bottom, with the Suggest next prompts and Clear answered buttons under it. Questions stack above it, oldest first, so the newest is just above the box. When you ask or an answer comes in, the pane scrolls to the bottom so the box stays in view.

• /ask opens the pane with the cursor in the question box.
• /ask <question> sends the question and opens the pane. You can keep working while Claude thinks. A toast tells you when the answer is ready.
• Suggest next prompts asks Claude for three prompts you could send next.
• When Claude suggests prompts, each one gets a Use button. It puts that prompt in the prompt box, ready to edit or send. When there are too many buttons for one line, they wrap onto the next.
• Copy copies an answer. Remove drops one. Retry runs a failed one again. Clear answered keeps only the questions still running.

The status line shows how many questions are still running.

Notes

• The fork can't use tools. It answers from the conversation alone.
• A question typed in the pane leaves no trace in the chat. The /ask command prints nothing, but Claude Code may still log the command line itself, as it does for other commands.
• The pane keeps the last 30 questions for the session.