Ask in chat

The side panel labeled Ask Claude (or your agent's name) is where you make bigger requests, anything that's more than a one-line tweak.

You type a prompt. The agent writes the result into the document, not into the chat. The chat thread is the conversation; the page is the work.

Open the chat panel

Click the sparkle icon in the right rail, or press ⌘J. The panel slides open beside the document.

Ask for something

Type into the input at the bottom and press ↩. A few useful kinds of asks:

Draft a section: Add a "Risks" section with three bullets.
Restructure: Move §3 above §2 and update the cross-references.
Expand: Take this outline and turn it into a first draft.
Tighten: Cut the doc by 30%, keep the headings.

Your agent's reply in the chat is short, usually a one-line acknowledgement and a summary of what it did. The real output streams into the page beside it, with the clay caret showing where it's writing.

See what changed

As the agent writes:

A "Claude is writing…" indicator pulses in the title bar.
New content streams in character by character; you can scroll along or wait until it settles.
The save state in the title bar flips to Saving… and back to Saved automatically.

If you stop liking what you see mid-stream, press Esc to interrupt. Whatever was written stays in the doc; you can keep it, edit it, or roll it back.

With selection

If you have a paragraph highlighted when you send a chat message, your agent treats the selection as context, "explain this in plain English" will operate on what you've selected. Without a selection, the request operates on the whole document or appends to the end, whichever fits.

Tips

One ask per message. It's easier to roll back a single change than to untangle a combined one.
Be concrete about scope. "Rewrite the intro" is clearer than "make the doc better."
Use comments for surgical edits. If you want to change one line, leave a comment instead, the result lands on the line you mean, not somewhere the agent guessed.