Started conversations

A Claude contact can start another conversation, for work that should go on apart from its own: "start a new conversation for the promo film", or a side task it comes across while it works. The new conversation is a contact of its own, listed under the one that started it, and that one hears from it each time it finishes a turn.

Asking for one. Say it the way you would to a person. The conversation says "Claude started a conversation: Update the promo film's roster…", and the new contact gets to work at once. Its window doesn't open: double-click it in the list to look in.

One it thinks of itself waits for you. It is in your list with its first message in its message box, unsent, and the line says "Claude added a conversation for you to start". Open it, change the message if you like, and press Send. Delete the contact if you don't want it.

What it is. A contact like one you add, with the service, model, effort level, mode and group of the one that started it:

• It works in a worktree of its own, on a new branch, and its project's setup script gets the worktree ready, as for any new contact.
• The branch is named after what it is to do, and so is the contact: "Claude (update-promo-roster)".
• The branch starts from the project's main line, or from the branch of the conversation that started it when that one asks. Only what is committed there comes along.
• Its conversation starts with a line saying who started it. Its agent knows nothing else of that conversation: its first message says everything it needs.

In the contact list it is right under the one that started it, joined to it by a line. That one shows how many are under it, at the end of its row. The ones those start are listed under it too, on the same level. A conversation that is in another section than the one that started it is listed there like any other contact: one that is waiting for you, a favorite, offline or archived, or one left out by a search.

Hearing back. Each time it finishes a turn, the conversation that started it says so in a line: "Claude (update-promo-roster) finished a turn: The roster is updated…". Its agent is sent what was said, so it can tell you, or decide what comes next.

• One that is at work, or waiting for you, reads it once it is done. Several that came in meanwhile are read together, the newest from each.
• A turn that was stopped, or went wrong, is not passed on.
• A conversation hears from the ones it started, and no further: what one says only to pass a note on doesn't go up to the one that started it.

Good to know:

• The two can't send each other anything else. To tell the new one something, open it and say it.
• In a group conversation, what any agent starts is listed under the contact whose conversation it is, and that contact's agent hears back.
• An archived contact hears nothing while it is archived. A deleted one leaves the conversations it started in the list, on their own.
• Only Claude contacts can start one. Codex, Gemini, OpenCode and Hermes can't yet.
• In demo mode, say "new conversation": the contact starts one for a side task, and passes on what came of it a few seconds later.