Anara has two kinds of chat. Agent chat is the main chat where you do all your research. Ask chat is a secondary, per-file or per-folder conversation that lives inside the right sidebar, for when you want chats organized around a specific file or folder. If you're not sure which to use, use Agent chat.
Looking for a chat you had inside a file or folder?
Those are Ask chats, and they live on the file or folder where you started them, not in the Chats tab in the left sidebar. To find one, go to the file or folder, open the right sidebar, click the Ask tab, and use the chat title dropdown at the top to browse your previous conversations there.
The Chats tab in the left sidebar lists Agent chats only.
Agent chat is the main chat
Agent chat is the primary AI chat in Anara. It can:
Search your full library, the web, and every connected source (Zotero, Notion, PubMed, and more)
Read any specific file or folder with the same depth as Ask chat
Run the full set of agent tools: plan multi-step tasks, create notes, generate images, execute code, import papers, and delegate to sub-agents
Agent chat is aware of whatever you have open. If a file is open, it treats that file as your current context. If a folder is open, it treats that folder as your current context. You can still widen the scope to your whole library or the web when a question calls for it.
This is the chat for almost every research task you'll do in Anara.
Tip: Want Agent chat to behave exactly like Ask chat, grounded strictly in the open file with no outside sources? Open the file and toggle off both library search and web search below the chat input. Agent chat is then scoped to that file alone. See Using @mentions to control the AI for more on source filters.
What Ask chat is for
Ask chat is a companion chat that lives inside the right sidebar. The right sidebar can appear next to a file or next to a folder. Open it, click the Ask tab, and the chat is right there. Ask chat isn't better at file-grounded answers than Agent chat. The one thing it does that Agent chat doesn't: it keeps a separate, ongoing conversation scoped to that specific file or folder.
Use Ask chat when you want:
A chat permanently anchored to a specific file or folder so you can return to it later and pick up where you left off
A tidy way to keep per-file or per-folder conversations separate from your main research thread
Quick, in-flow questions while you're reading, without leaving the file
If you just want the AI to answer a question about a file, Agent chat works fine. Ask chat is specifically for keeping conversations organized by file or folder.
Where to find each
Agent chat:
Click the Agent button in the top right of the app to open the Agent sidebar.
Click Create on the Home page and choose Agent.
Click Create in the left sidebar and choose Agent.
Past Agent conversations live in the Chats tab in the left sidebar.
Ask chat:
Open any file or folder.
Open the right sidebar (click the toggle on the right edge of the viewer if it's collapsed).
Click the Ask tab.
Same engine under the hood
Both chats run on the same AI, with the same model selector, source filters, citations, and attachments. The differences are organizational, not quality. Pick Agent chat by default. Pick Ask chat when you specifically want conversations organized per file or folder.
Tip: For research-heavy tasks like literature reviews or multi-file synthesis, turn on Deep Search from the plus menu in Agent chat. It runs multiple passes across your sources for a more thorough answer. Available on the Max plan.