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Talk to ACE

The Chat tab is the conversational front door to ACE. You describe what you want in plain language, and ACE answers, investigates, or turns your request into real work. It is the fastest way to get started once your codebase is mapped.

You'll find Chat under Assistant in the sidebar. Chat needs an active project. If your workspace has none yet, you'll see a Create a project button instead of the chat.

Prerequisites

Chat is most useful after your project has a connected repository and a mapped codebase, so ACE can answer from your actual code.

Ask ACE anything​

Open a new chat and you'll see "What can I help you build today?" with a few starter prompts. A starter prompt fills the message box for you, but nothing sends until you press Enter, so you always review first.

Use Chat to:

  • Ask how your code works. For Trakk: "Walk me through how the Kanban board renders cards."
  • Discuss a bug. Describe the symptom and ACE investigates against your mapped code before suggesting a fix.
  • Request a change or a new feature. For example, "Add a due date badge to each card."

For questions and explanations, ACE just replies in the conversation.

Turn a conversation into a card​

When you ask for real work, a fix or a new feature, ACE can file it as a card on the Development board straight from the chat. The card is tagged back to the conversation, so the request does not get lost in chat scrollback.

From there the card follows the same path you saw in Ship your first feature: triage, plan, build, test, and a pull request, with your approval at each key step.

Check on and steer work in progress​

Chat is also a quick control panel for work that is already running:

  • Ask what the agents are doing. ACE narrates its progress live in the thread, and you can ask for a status update at any time.
  • Ask ACE to move a card. For example, "Move the due date card to In Progress." ACE moves it across the board for you.
  • Ask ACE to stop a card. If something looks wrong on a card that is mid-run, tell ACE to stop it. The card returns to review so you can decide what happens next.
You stay in control

Anything that changes your files still goes through the board's approval steps. Chat is where the conversation and the request happen. The Development board is where the resulting work is tracked and carried out.

Bring context from other screens​

Several screens have a Discuss in chat button: a pull request, an incident, a deployment, and a scheduled cost or security check. Clicking it opens a chat conversation already bound to that item, with ACE's existing analysis attached, so you can dig into the details without re-explaining anything.

Next steps​

  • Explore Core Concepts to understand the Software Factory, agents, and workflows in more depth.
  • Try asking ACE to build a second feature entirely from Chat, and watch the card appear on the Development board.
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