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Team chat

Chat lives in the same workspace as your projects. That is the whole point: a decision made in a conversation can become tracked work without leaving the tool, and a task ID pasted into a channel turns into a live card instead of a dead string.

Chat is part of Pro, and guests never have access to it. See pricing.

Channels and DMs

Section titled “Channels and DMs”

There are two kinds of room:

  • Channels — named, for a team or a topic. Your workspace starts with #general. A channel can be linked to a project or to a team.
  • Direct messages — 1:1 or a small group. No name, just the people in it.

Every project can have its own channel. It is created automatically the first time someone opens that project’s Chat tab, so there is no ritual of setting up a room before the conversation can happen.

Press G then C to jump to a channel, or type # in the command palette.

Threads stay one level deep

Section titled “Threads stay one level deep”

Reply to a message and the replies collapse underneath it. That is as deep as it goes — there are no threads inside threads, on purpose. Nested conversations are where context goes to die.

Thread replies also never bump the channel’s unread badge. A side conversation stays a side conversation, and the channel stays calm for everyone not in it.

Live by default

Section titled “Live by default”

Messages arrive as they are sent — no refresh, no polling.

The sidebar shows who is online or away. Offline is not a state anyone sets: it is what you become when you stop being seen. You will also see the “is typing…” row while somebody is composing.

Writing a message

Section titled “Writing a message”

The composer is the same rich-text editor as your task descriptions: headings, formatting, code blocks, @mentions, and images. Attach files up to 25 MB.

A few things that keep a channel honest:

  • React with emoji instead of replying “👍” as a message.
  • Save a message to your Saved list when you need it later.
  • Edited messages say “(edited)”. Deleted ones leave a quiet placeholder, so a thread that referred to them still makes sense.
  • A NEW line marks exactly where you stopped reading.

From message to task

Section titled “From message to task”

This is the feature the rest of it exists for.

Hover any message and create a task from it. dotby fills in:

  • the title, from the first line of the message
  • the description, carrying the full message plus a link back to the conversation
  • the project, pre-selected when the channel is linked to one

So “someone should file that” stops being a sentence people say and start being a thing that happened.

Task IDs unfurl

Section titled “Task IDs unfurl”

Type a task ID like DOT-42 in a message and it expands into a live card showing the current status and assignees — live, not a snapshot. Someone reading the channel next week sees where that task is now.

Mentions

Section titled “Mentions”

@name notifies one person. @team-name notifies everyone currently in that team, which means you do not have to remember who joined last month. @everyone notifies the whole channel — worth using rarely enough that it still means something.

Next

Section titled “Next”