Chat Basics

Chat is where you talk to Zinley directly — ask a question, think through a plan, hand over a task, or tell it to make a call or send an email. Everything else in Zinley grows out of these conversations.

The Zinley Chat screen: conversation history on the left, header controls up top, the greeting and suggestions in the middle, and the message box with credits and model selector below.
Chat — conversation history on the left, the task and controls up top, and the message box below.

Sending a message

Type in the Message… box and press Enter. Ask naturally — "Email Anh and ask for the updated invoice," or "Compare these two contracts and tell me what changed."

Replies stream in as they're written, so you can start reading before Zinley finishes. You'll also see what it's doing along the way — thinking, searching, running a tool.

Attachments and uploads

Use the 📎 Attach button to add files to any message:

  • Images — send pictures and text together in the same message. Screenshot a bug, photograph a receipt, drop in a chart and ask what it means.
  • Files and documents — PDFs, spreadsheets, transcripts, code. Up to 50MB per file.

Attachments stay part of the conversation, so you can keep referring back to them later on.

Steer it while it's working

You don't have to wait for Zinley to finish before correcting it. Send another message while it's still running — your note is folded into the run in progress, without restarting it.

"Actually, skip the third vendor." · "Keep it under 200 words." · "Use the numbers from the PDF, not the ones in the email."

This is usually better than stopping and starting over: Zinley keeps everything it has already figured out and just changes course.

A reply in progress: the user has sent a follow-up message that Zinley folds in without restarting, with the Stop control visible.
Steer a running reply — send a follow-up without stopping the work.

Stop, close, come back

  • Stop — the stop button ends the reply Zinley is currently writing. You can also stop everything if several things are running at once.
  • Close the app mid-answer — the reply keeps generating on Zinley's side. Come back later, reopen the conversation, and pick it up where it got to. Nothing is lost because your laptop went to sleep.

Improve my prompt

Not sure how to phrase something? Use improve my prompt and Zinley rewrites your instruction into a clearer, more specific version before you send it — useful for big research or writing requests where detail changes the outcome.

Prompt improvement draws on its own quota, separate from your normal message credits, so tightening up a prompt doesn't eat into your day.

Templates

Zinley ships with a library of curated chat templates — ready-made starting points for common jobs. Browse the list, pick one, fill in your specifics, and send.

Templates are maintained by Zinley, so you can't write your own — but anything a template does, you can also just ask for in your own words.

Ask anything

Ask anything is a read-only lookup across everything Zinley knows about you — past conversations, people, topics, calls, and emails all at once.

  • Ask "What did I promise Linh last week?" or "What's still open on the Hanoi move?"
  • Answers come back with the sources they came from, so you can check the receipts.
  • It's read-only — Ask anything never sends, books, or changes anything. When you want action, ask in a normal chat message instead.

Zinley remembers

Two kinds of memory sit behind every conversation.

Automatic memory. As you talk, Zinley picks up on the things that matter — who people are, how you work, what you've decided — and carries them forward. You don't have to repeat yourself in every new chat.

Workspace Memory. This is the part you control: what Zinley knows about your work — view it, correct it, pin what matters. It's organised into seven kinds:

Kind What goes in it
Business facts The stable truths about your work — company, role, hours, pricing
Services What you offer, and how you describe it
Resources Links, docs, accounts, and tools Zinley should reach for
Skills Things you've taught it to do a certain way
Patterns How you usually handle a recurring situation
Escalation rules When Zinley should stop and come to you
Instructions Standing directions that apply everywhere

For every entry you can:

  • Create, edit, and delete — fix a wrong fact the moment you spot it.
  • Pin / unpin — pinned entries stay front-of-mind for Zinley.
  • Archive / restore — retire something without losing it; bring it back if it becomes true again.

If Zinley keeps getting a detail wrong, Workspace Memory is the place to fix it once instead of correcting it in every conversation.

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