Chat & Advisers

This guide covers the chat interface, how Varen routes your questions to specialist advisers, and practical techniques for getting better responses.

Using the text-selection context menu

Select text in a conversation and open the context menu to see four actions: Copy, More detail, Add to chat, and New session from selection. Add to chat inserts the excerpt into the composer as [> selected text <], so it is distinguishable from your own wording. The other actions copy the excerpt, ask for expansion, or start a separate thread.

What crossed-out text means

Varen does not currently use crossed-out text as a deletion or history marker. Deleting a workspace, session, file, or removable fact removes it from the relevant view; collapsing a conversation turn only hides it in the interface and does not delete backend content. If strikethrough appears inside generated Markdown, treat it as model-generated formatting, not as an application status.

The chat interface

The Chat tab inside a workspace window is where conversations happen. Type into the input box at the bottom of the window. Press Enter to send your message; Shift+Enter inserts a newline without sending, which is useful for longer, structured messages.

Responses stream in token-by-token as they're generated. You don't wait for a complete response — you see it build. This lets you start reading and understanding the direction of the answer before it's finished. While a response is streaming, a Stop button appears on that turn. Click it to abort the response early if it's heading in the wrong direction, then rephrase your question and try a different framing.

How Varen chooses an adviser

You don't choose an adviser — there's no control to select or steer one. When you send a question, Varen reads it, classifies the subject matter, and routes it to the most appropriate adviser — or combination of advisers — best suited to answer. A question about capital gains tax goes to the financial adviser. A question about a sore knee goes to the health adviser. A question about whether you can claim home-office expenses as a nurse working from a dedicated room goes to both.

This routing is automatic and invisible. You just ask. The routing logic takes into account the workspace's established intent, your profile facts, the question itself, and the context from earlier in the session. A well-named workspace with a clear purpose produces more accurate routing than a vague one.

Routing is automatic

Under normal use you don't select an adviser — routing happens automatically on every turn, based on the workspace intent, your profile facts, the question, and the context earlier in the session. A well-named workspace with a clear purpose produces more accurate routing than a vague one.

The Understanding panel

Above each response is an Understanding bar. Expand it to see what the system considered when preparing the reply: facts it drew from your knowledge base, any web pages it consulted during research, how it interpreted your question, and other signals it used to form the response. Think of it as "showing the working".

The Understanding panel is most useful when a response surprises you or seems off. If the answer doesn't fit your situation, the Understanding panel often shows why — perhaps a fact in your knowledge base is outdated, or the question was interpreted in a way you didn't intend, or a web source contributed content that skewed the answer. When you understand what went wrong, you can rephrase your question and send it again, or update the relevant fact in the knowledge base.

Intent divergence

If a question seems to come from a domain well outside this workspace's established purpose, Varen pauses and shows an Intent divergence panel instead of answering immediately. This panel offers three choices:

Continue — override the check and answer the question anyway within this session.
New Session — start a fresh session in this workspace, which is useful if you're beginning a new sub-topic that you want to keep separate from the existing thread.
Cancel — dismiss the panel and rewrite the question in a way that fits the workspace's purpose.

Intent divergence is not an error and it's not a refusal. It's a signal that the question might be better served by a different workspace, or that a clean context would produce a better answer. If you consistently find it triggering on questions that are genuinely within scope, check the derived intent in the Profile tab — it may need updating to reflect how the workspace has evolved since it was created.

Getting better responses

The quality of Varen's responses depends substantially on the quality of the questions. A few principles make a consistent difference:

Be specific. "What are my home-office deduction options as a sole trader in Queensland with a dedicated room?" gets a better answer than "can I claim home-office deductions?" The more context is in the question, the less the adviser has to assume.
Rephrase and resend. If a response misses the mark, send a follow-up that adds the missing context or reframes the ask. If it's still streaming and clearly wrong, use Stop first, then try a sharper question.
Use your profile. Anything stable about who you are belongs in your profile so you never have to repeat it in every conversation. See Knowledge & Profile for how to set this up.
Use uploads. If you're asking about a specific document — a lease, a contract, a financial statement, a medical report — upload it and refer to it by name. The adviser can read the document's content and give answers specific to your actual situation rather than a general one.
One question at a time. Multi-part questions work, but can produce multi-part answers where some parts are weaker than others. Separating distinct questions into separate turns — or separate sessions — generally produces clearer, more thorough responses to each part.