This week we retired generic chat entirely. The plus button opens the hire picker, not a blank thread. Onboarding now starts with a first-agent carousel — pick a Free everyday specialist and Cloudia wires the team. We also shipped a Remember tab on specialists, a live Helper Board in parent chat, and an OLED dark theme with Cloudia's thinking orb.
Every chat thread now belongs to an agent
Before this week, the plus button in Chat could spawn a blank "New conversation" — a ChatGPT-style thread with no specialist skills, no duties, no file paths. It competed with Cloudia, burned credits on a generic system prompt, and left new users wondering which thread was the real product. Worse: dismissed specialists and old generic threads still looked clickable, but replies used the wrong persona or landed in archived history you thought was live.
Now the roster has three live lanes only. **Cloudia** for building teams and wiring duties. **Hired specialists** — Research, Browser, Content, whichever you deployed — each with their own skills and scheduled duties. **Talk to Human** for support. The plus button opens **Choose an agent** (the hire picker), not a popup with "New conversation." Past threads from dismissed specialists or legacy generic chats sit under **Past chats** with the composer locked and a banner explaining why — history stays readable, but you cannot accidentally send into a dead thread.
Why this matters for how CloudAxis works: the product is a team on a persistent cloud desktop, not a chat box that resets. Agents hand off through files at paths like `~/files/reports/competitor-prices.csv`. Duties run on cron whether you are online or not. A generic thread breaks that model — no skills, no duty context, no reason to exist. We wrote about building a team inside the OS in our guide to hiring specialist agents; retiring generic chat makes that architecture the only path in the UI.
We also fixed desktop layout regressions in the same window: the left roster and composer glue correctly again, and active specialist threads no longer flash as archived when the shell reloads. On mobile, the chat drawer matches — same three live lanes, same locked Past chats section.
What comes next: we are watching whether first-session users reach a hired specialist faster without the generic escape hatch. If you still have a legacy "New Chat" row with zero messages, it will stay in Past chats until we optionally hide empty legacy threads in a follow-up.
Also shipped
Smaller changes that landed alongside the chat rework:
- First-agent onboarding carousel. New signups pick a Free everyday specialist from a Cloudia-led carousel — Research, inbox triage, social drafting — before the shell tour. Cloudia builds the specialist, names the skills on the Build Your Own slide, and can wire multi-agent handoffs. The old goal picker is skipped on first run so you land in Chat with work moving.
- Remember tab. Open any specialist's settings and you get a Remember tab for facts that persist across duties — brand voice, competitor list, report format. Chat pin chrome is hidden on CloudAxis so memory lives in one place, not scattered pins.
- Live Helper Board. When Cloudia or a parent agent spawns sub-agents, progress appears inline in the chat thread — desktop, mobile, and embed — instead of disappearing into a black box.
- OLED dark theme. Chat and shell chrome go true black on OLED phones; Cloudia shows a thinking orb while she works instead of a static typing indicator.
- Task progress Dismiss. Long-running task executions that finished but stuck the progress strip now clear with an explicit Dismiss control.
- Connect and Files polish. OAuth connect panels flow inline without extra hops; `.txt` files get Quick Look preview; Settings has a proper dock entry; WhatsApp Pro upgrade banners show where they belong.
What's next
Onboarding completion rates on the first-agent carousel are the metric we are watching this month. The September 1 list price change for new subscribers is already announced — founding members keep their current rate through March 2027 (details here).
Frequently asked questions
What happened to my old generic chats?
They moved to Past chats with the composer locked. You can still read the history. Start a new message from Cloudia or a hired specialist instead.
What does the plus button do now?
It opens Choose an agent — the hire picker — so you deploy a specialist with skills and duties, not a blank thread.