# 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](group-conversations.md), 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.