A chat is a conversation in Bridge. Most chats belong to a study—they're where that study gets built and where you ask questions about it later. Some stand on their own until you turn them into a study. This article covers how chats work, why you can't see a colleague's, and how to find an old conversation again.
In This Article
- A Study and Its Chat
- Chats Without a Study
- Opening Someone Else's Study
- Working with Skipper
- Finding a Conversation Again
- Support Conversations
A Study and Its Chat
Every study is born with exactly one chat, created at the same moment the study is, and it stays with that study for the study's entire life. Nothing detaches it, and it isn't something you pick or configure.
That chat matters for one reason: it's what lets changes be made to the study. That's true for you and for Skipper alike—Skipper writes to a study through its own chat and nowhere else. The only way it moves to another person is an ownership handover, where the whole study changes hands.
In the dock, a study and your conversation about it are one thing: a single stone.
Chats Without a Study
You don't have to start with a study. Open a fresh chat and just talk—useful for thinking out loud, asking a methodology question, or working out what you actually want to test before committing to building it.
A chat with no study sits in the dock as a pearl. When you're ready, ask Skipper to build the study and the pearl becomes a stone, keeping its place in the dock. Bridge calls that a conversion, and your conversation carries over—you don't start again.
Two controls open a fresh conversation, and they do the same thing:
- The Bridge logo in the header—New chat.
- The New study pearl at the foot of the dock.
Neither creates anything on its own. Both clear your screen and take you to the welcome page, where a conversation is minted by your first message and a study by the template you pick.
Opening Someone Else's Study
When you open a study you didn't create, you get a read-only canvas with a banner telling you so, and a conversation of your own. Ask it anything—Skipper will explain the study, walk you through the methodology, or talk through the results.
A few things are worth knowing about that conversation:
- It doesn't exist until you speak. Before your first message there's nothing stored anywhere. The composer is there, ready; your first question is what creates it.
- It's yours. The study's owner can't see it, and neither can anyone else who opens the same study. Everyone gets their own.
- It comes back. Once created, it's findable like any other conversation, so you can return to the discussion later.
⚠️ Note: Chats aren't shared. Two people looking at the same study each have their own conversation about it, and neither can read the other's. If you need a colleague to see something you discussed, pass it on yourself.
Skipper on someone else's study will answer and explain, but it won't change the study. Ask it to, and it'll tell you the change belongs in the owner's chat. To work on the study yourself, clone it—see Copying a Study in Bridge.
Working with Skipper
Skipper handles requests in conversations. While it's working you'll see a progress bar above the composer—collapsed it averages the whole job, and you can expand it to see each piece.
While a request is running, you can:
- Cancel it and send something else instead.
- Ask it to retry if it failed or took a wrong turn.
- Answer a question—Skipper sometimes asks one directly rather than guessing, and your answer feeds straight back into what it's doing.
💡 Tip: If Skipper stops before finishing, the work it already completed is saved. Look at the study's cards to see how far it got, then ask for the next piece as a smaller step rather than repeating the whole request.
Finding a Conversation Again
Two ways, depending on what you know.
Search palette. Press ⌘K (or Ctrl K) from anywhere, including mid-sentence in the composer. With the field empty it lists your six most recent studies and chats. Type and it matches titles as you go—it's forgiving about word order and spelling, so pkg test finds "Q3 Packaging concept test". Arrow keys move the highlight, Enter opens.
All studies. Open it from the header for the full table. Your own chats are rows in it alongside your studies, so you can filter, sort, and group them together.
💡 Tip: Type a question into the palette—three words or more, or something starting with "what", "how", or "compare"—and it offers Ask Skipper. Taking that starts a fresh conversation with your question as the first message, so a passing thought never lands in the middle of a study you were only reading.
A study's own conversation is never a separate row in either place. You reach it through the study.
You can rename a chat to make it easier to find later, and delete ones you're finished with. Deleting a study deletes its conversation with it—they go together.
Support Conversations
When you need a person rather than an assistant, press Support in the header. It behaves differently from every other conversation in four ways:
- Skipper isn't in it. Not listening, not answering, not summarising. You're talking to aytm.
- It never holds a study, so opening it doesn't disturb whatever's on your canvas—support opens beside your work, not instead of it.
- You only ever have one. Pressing Support takes you back to the conversation you already have rather than starting a new one each time.
- It isn't in the dock. Support lives on the header pill, and the pill carries a dot when there's something new for you.
One press does the right thing: it resumes a conversation you already have, brings back a message you started typing but never sent, or opens a fresh one. If your chat is folded away, the press unfolds it.
The ✕ on the support card—Close support chat—puts support away without ending anything. Press the pill again and it's back exactly as you left it.
To finish properly, use End chat in the composer, which then offers you a rating. Starting over during a live conversation means ending it first, then starting a new one.
⚠️ Note: Outside working hours you'll get an offline ticket instead of a live conversation. That's answered by email, not in Bridge, so nothing appears in your chat list for it.