---
title: "Chat"
description: "Ask an assistant in the app, pick a query mode, follow a conversation and see what each answer cost."
canonical: "https://lookio.app/docs/platform/chat"
updated: "2026-10-24"
---

# Chat

**Chat** is where you talk to your assistants. It is the quickest way to check that a resource and an assistant work together before you automate anything.

## Ask a question

Pick an assistant, write a question in the box and send it. The assistant searches its resources, reads the best passages and writes the answer. While it works, the chat shows its phase: searching, reading, then answering. The answer appears as it is written.

Answers are rendered as Markdown. Citations such as `[1]` point to the passages the answer relies on: see [Citations](/docs/platform/citations).

## Choose a query mode

The **Query mode** menu in the box sets how the answer is produced and what it costs.

| Mode  | Credits | Use it for                            |
| ----- | ------- | ------------------------------------- |
| Flash | 30      | The default. Fast answers.            |
| Eco   | 10      | Questions that can wait a little.     |
| Deep  | 80      | Complex questions with several parts. |

The price is fixed, whatever the length of the answer, and an answer that finds nothing costs the same. See [Core concepts](/docs/get-started/concepts#query-modes).

Each answer shows the mode it used, the credits it cost and how long it took.

## Conversations

Use **Archive** in a conversation's menu to remove it from your active chat list. **Archived chats** opens the archive; **Restore** returns it to the active list. Archiving keeps the messages and their entries in Logs, under the same access rules. It does not change credits already spent. **Delete** permanently removes the conversation and its messages, while the credit usage record remains.

Lookio stores your conversations, grouped by assistant. Only you see them.

- A conversation stays with one assistant. To ask another assistant, start a new chat.
- Follow-up questions use the last six turns of the conversation as context.
- Rename or delete a conversation from its menu. Deleting removes its messages.
- When an assistant is deleted, its conversations move to **Deleted assistants**. You can read them but not continue them.
- If an admin removes your access to an assistant, you can no longer open its conversations.

## When there is no answer

If the resources hold nothing relevant, the assistant says so, and the question is charged like any other. An assistant that reads no resource cannot be asked: the chat says so and sends nothing. See [Troubleshooting](/docs/platform/troubleshooting#no-answer-found) if you expected one.

## Chat from the API

Every answer from the API is kept in a conversation you continue with `conversation_id`. A personal connection (the CLI after `lookio auth login`, an MCP client) keeps your own chats, personal like the ones in the app. An API key keeps the conversations its questions start, which the workspace reads in its [logs](/docs/platform/logs): see [Conversations and end users](/docs/platform/conversations-and-end-users). See also [Ask an assistant](/docs/api/assistants/query-assistant) and [Streaming](/docs/api/streaming).