Chat files
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Every chat carries its own file tree. Reports the assistant writes, images and clips it generates, and recordings you make in voice mode all land there, scoped to that single conversation.
These files live outside your Drive. Open the chat menu next to the chat title and choose View files to browse them. They belong to the chat, so whoever can open the chat can see them, and nobody else can.
Three kinds of things end up in the tree:
Files the assistant writes. Ask it to save a report, a script, a table, or notes and it writes the file into the chat, creating any folders the path needs.
Media it generates. Images go to Generated Images, speech to Generated Audio, clips to Generated Videos. Name a different folder in your message and the output lands there instead.
Your recordings. Clips from voice mode are filed here with their transcript, so they can be searched and read like any other file.
Files you attach to a message with the paperclip are different: those stay in your Drive, in the Uploads folder, and the message points at them. Chat files are what the conversation itself produces.
Access follows the chat and nothing else. A private chat's files are readable by you alone. A team chat's files are readable by the members of the workspace. If you share a chat publicly and the share allows files, readers of that share can read them too.
Someone who cannot open the chat gets a not-found answer rather than a permission error, so the existence of a private chat's files is never disclosed. This is the reason the tree sits outside Drive: Drive shares at the workspace level, so scratch files kept there were readable by teammates while the conversation itself stayed private.
Open the chat menu and choose View files. The panel opens on the right and lists one folder level at a time, with breadcrumbs across the top and the chat's totals under the title.
Select a folder to walk into it, or a breadcrumb to walk back out.
Use the download icon on a row to save a copy to your computer. Open a folder first if you want something inside it.
Use the rename icon to give a file a new name, and the delete icon to remove it. Deleting a chat file is immediate: this tree has no trash.
The microphone button at the top of the panel filters the tree to recordings only, which is the fastest way to find something you said earlier. A recording plays in place, scrubs, and carries its transcript, so a search for a phrase you spoke finds the clip.
In a team chat a kept recording is audible to everyone who can open the chat. The recorder tells you when that is the case before you keep a clip.
Alongside the files you recognize, a chat collects the bookkeeping the agent needs while it works: spilled tool output, observation frames, intermediate results. Those rows are hidden by default so the tree stays readable.
Reveal them with the Show control under the list, hide them again the same way, and clear every one of them at once with the delete action in that group's header. Machine files are never included in a public share and never search-indexed.
Chat files are real bytes and count toward the same workspace storage ceiling as Drive. One account, one cap. When you are at the ceiling a write is refused with "Storage is full. Delete files or upgrade your plan.", and the file is not created.
Deleting chat files frees the space immediately. The assistant's own bookkeeping is exempt from failing a run at the ceiling: spilled output degrades to a truncated preview instead of stopping the answer.
Rewinding, forking, and compaction leave files alone. Files are not message-ordered, so going back in the conversation does not delete anything, and the assistant can still read what it wrote.
Trashing a chat keeps its files. They stay hidden from public shares while the chat sits in the trash, and they come back with it when you restore the chat.
Deleting a chat permanently deletes its files with it, unless you tick Keep this chat's files in the delete dialog. Ticking it copies them to a Chat files folder in your Drive, named after the chat, keeping the folder structure.
The assistant reads and writes this tree with the same verbs you can call yourself, which is how it saves work into the chat instead of into your Drive. From a terminal the noun is chat-files, and the REST surface is under /api/v1/chat-files.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
idapt chat-files list | List a chat's files (one folder level); --path selects the folder, the tree root when omitted. |
idapt chat-files read | Read a chat file's text (--path or --id); optional 1-based line window (--offset/--limit) or --pattern. |
idapt chat-files write | Write a chat file (--path, --content); folders on the path are created. Overwrites by default. |
idapt chat-files edit | Patch a chat file via str-replace (--path, --old-text, --new-text); --replace-all swaps every occurrence. |
idapt chat-files glob | Find chat files by glob over their full paths (--pattern). |
idapt chat-files grep | Search chat-file TEXT with a regular expression (--pattern), returning path/line/text hits. |
idapt chat-files move | Rename or move a chat file or folder (--from, --to). |
idapt chat-files delete | Delete a chat file, or a folder with --recursive. Destructive and irreversible: there is no trash. |
idapt chat-files create-folder | Create a folder in a chat's tree (--path); intermediate folders are created. |
idapt chat-files usage | A chat's file usage: file and folder counts plus total bytes. |
If a file matters beyond the conversation, download it or tick keep-files when you delete the chat. Drive is where long-lived material belongs.
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