Hand it off

A chat does one thing at a time, and some jobs take a while. Hand one off and it works in the background while you get on with something else. You're told when it's done, and its result comes back to where you asked.

Send something away

1. Write what you'd like done in the message box, as you would any message.
2. Press Ctrl⇧↵, or the Do it in the background button that appears once you've written something.
3. Carry on. A card in the chat shows what the task is doing.

You can also ask in words: "do this in the background and tell me when it's done". Or press CtrlK and choose Do it in the background.

A task uses the same provider, model and mode as the chat it came from. It can do nothing that chat couldn't.

To have another provider do it, say so: "have Codex CLI do this in the background". Any provider you've connected can take it. Its card says who's doing it.

Watch it work

The card stays where it first appeared and keeps itself current: what the task is doing now, its last few steps, and how long it has been going. When the task finishes, the card shows its result.

Tasks in the sidebar lists everything, with a count of what's working, or of what needs your OK. The page puts what needs you first, then what's working, then what's waiting, then what finished. Up to three tasks work at once. The rest wait their turn.

Every task is a chat of its own. Open shows it, and there you can read along, answer what it asks, or stop it. Stop on the card ends a task at any point.

When it needs you

A task asks before it acts, as its chat would, and holds nothing else up. Its card says Needs your OK, and See what it's asking takes you to the question. Other tasks keep working. If nobody answers within an hour, the answer is no.

When it's done

Conch tells you in the app, and on your devices when notifications are on. The switch is When a background task finishes, in Settings → Notifications. See On your phone.

Verified complete means Conch checked the workflow's required results against real tool or provider receipts. The card lists confirmed changes and links you can inspect, such as a saved draft. A saved draft is not a sent message.

Result not verified means the assistant finished replying, but Conch cannot independently prove the requested outcome. Its summary is preserved, not treated as evidence. General free-form tasks without a result-checking contract use this state, even if the assistant says “done”. Partial results stay visible after failure or cancellation.

Resume safely continues in the same chat with saved progress. It does not restart from a blank conversation. Confirmed writes are not repeated. If Conch lost a provider's response and cannot prove whether a write happened, it stops rather than create a duplicate. Open the original app to inspect the result. A search returning no matches is not always proof that a write failed.

After a restart or backup restore, both running and queued tasks wait for you to resume. Old approval answers do not carry over. A declined approval that provably prevented a write can be asked again; a lost network response cannot be treated as a decline. An account change or renewed consent cannot silently reuse an earlier account's operations.

Open a finished task and type a clarification or revision to continue. The same tool and account boundaries remain; asking a draft-only job to send a message does not give it permission to send. Previous results remain inspectable, but do not by themselves verify a revised goal.

On the Tasks page, Remove hides a finished task's card. Conch retains its operation receipts and request identity to prevent repeated effects; removing a card does not undo changes in other apps. Task goals and receipts are included with chats in backups. Restoring merges newer local receipts rather than erasing them. A restored task cannot issue a new write when the historical backup cannot prove whether it already happened; inspect the original app before starting a new job.

Helpers, side by side

When a job splits into parts that don't need each other, your assistant can run them at once, each with a helper, and bring the results back together. You don't start helpers. Your assistant does, and each one is a card in the chat.

• Helpers use the provider's faster model, unless a part needs the full one.
• A helper can be another provider you've connected. Ask for it ("have Codex write the tests while you fix the bug"), or your assistant picks one when it plainly suits a part, like a coding agent for changing code. The card says by which provider.
• A helper that changes code can work in its own copy of the folder, on its own branch. If it changed something, its card names the branch. Conch never merges it for you.
• Whichever provider does the work, helpers run in the chat's mode, stay as careful as their chat, keep to the same skills' limits, and stop when you stop the chat. A provider that can't work in that mode uses its safest one.
• Once you've spent your monthly budget, your assistant does the parts itself, one at a time.

Good to know

• A background task can't take attachments yet. Send those as a message.
• Tasks stay out of your chat list. CtrlK finds one by name. See Find anything.

Control work from the chat

Ask what a task is doing, ask to stop it, or give it another instruction once it finishes. The assistant can list and control work started in that chat. It cannot reach tasks from a different chat. Retrying retains the task’s evidence and permission limits; it does not start with a clean slate.