a chat for everything that isn't code, answered by your own model

ChatDGC is a chat app inside DGC for everything that isn't code: a question, a plan, a letter, a spreadsheet to make sense of. Your own model answers (the one you set in DGC, or another you pick for a chat), and your chats stay on your computer. It runs on its own engine, separate from Work (the coding sessions) and from Pips. The full guide is docs/CHATDGC.md.

The DGC side bar has two tabs, Chat and Work. New chat opens a chat in an editor tab, as does DGC: New Chat (ChatDGC) in the Command Palette. One search box finds a chat by its name or anything said in it. Enter sends, Shift+Enter adds a line, Esc stops a reply. A message you send while a reply is still being written waits above the box and goes when the reply finishes. A reply keeps going through a window reload or a closed window, and its tab shows it again when the window comes back; closing the tab mid-reply asks once whether to keep it running. A chat open in another VS Code window shows read-only with Open here, which brings that chat to this window, its reply still streaming if it is being written.

• Looks things up, and cites them. When an answer depends on facts it searches first, with the web search set in Settings → Web search (the same one Work and your Pips use), and every claim carries a pill that names its site and opens the page. Sources lists what it read and used. Web search is on unless you turn it off there (Search in ChatDGC).
• Deep research. Deep research in the box shows a plan you can edit (it starts on its own after 15 seconds), reads its way through many pages as you watch, then writes a report whose every citation was checked against its source. Open report shows it full screen; Export… saves it.
• Study mode. Study makes the chat a tutor until you turn it off: it asks what you know, teaches a step at a time, has you try, and checks with quick quizzes you answer with a click.
• Interactive answers. Ask for a calculator, a converter, a timer or a quiz and it opens in a tab beside the chat, locked down (no network, nothing from your chats or VS Code), in the editor's colours. ChatDGC checks what it shows once it's open and fixes it if it's wrong. A card under the reply has Open and Show code; Widgets N in the chat's header lists that chat's widgets, and the Library's Widgets tab keeps them all.
• Questions. When what comes next depends on something only you know, a reply asks with a card: pick an answer or type your own; a card of up to four questions sends them all with one button.
• Files, data and charts. Attach documents, images and spreadsheets, or paste something long. Answers about a spreadsheet come from exact queries (Analyzed the data shows them), and replies draw bar, line, area, pie and scatter charts you can hover, copy and save. Formulas are typeset.
• The canvas. A longer piece you'll work on together opens in an editor beside the chat: edit it yourself and ChatDGC reads your version and changes it with small edits you can undo, with every version kept.
• Files it makes. Ask for a document, PDF, spreadsheet or slides and the reply comes with the file.
• Projects and the Library. A project keeps chats, files and instructions together. The Library holds every file you attached or ChatDGC made, and every widget.
• Memory. What you tell it about yourself is kept in your own words, in the one memory Work sessions and Pips share; Settings → Memory shows it all, to edit or delete.
• Plugins. Every plugin you turned on in Settings → Plugins works here: reads happen at once, and a change waits on a card you approve (or hand to a Pip), unless you told that plugin it never needs to ask. A reply that read from a plugin shows its logo.
• Your voice. Dictate into the box, have a reply read aloud, or talk with voice mode, which listens, answers aloud and listens again. The speech models run on your computer: install one in Settings → Voice.

One file per chat in ~/.dgc/chat, readable only by you. Tick Temporary before your first message and the chat is never written down or listed. From your own program, the SDK's dgc.chat() reaches the same chats; see SDK.