Conversations

A conversation in QARK is a message tree with its own model, tools, context strategy, system prompt, and LLM parameters. Every conversation carries independent configuration — change the model, enable different tools, override the system prompt, all without affecting anything else.

Create a conversation

Cmd+N opens a new conversation. It inherits the default agent and model. Override either immediately in the Config tab or start typing and change later.

New conversations appear as a tab in the active pane and in the sidebar under Ungrouped, sorted by date.

Message operations

Each message exposes actions on hover:

Action	What happens
Copy	Copies content to clipboard as plain text or Markdown
Retry / Regenerate	Re-sends the prompt. Creates a new sibling branch — the original response is preserved
Edit	Modify a sent message and re-submit. Creates a new branch from that point with a fresh response
Delete	Removes the message. Deleting an assistant message removes all subsequent messages in that branch. Children are re-parented to preserve the tree
Fork	Creates an independent copy of the conversation up to this message as a new conversation

Branching

Regenerating a response or editing a message never overwrites the original. QARK creates a sibling branch — an alternate path from the same parent.

Branch navigator

When a message has siblings, a branch navigator appears with an X/Y indicator (e.g., 2/3 — viewing the second of three branches). Arrow buttons step between branches.

Switching branches swaps every message after the branch point. All branches share messages before the divergence and only store the delta — branches are lightweight.

When branches form

Action	Result
Regenerate a response	New sibling at the assistant message
Edit a user message	New sibling at the user message with fresh response

No limit on how many branches a single message can have.

Forking

Forking creates a new, independent conversation from any message. Unlike branching (which stays within the same conversation), a fork is a separate entry in the sidebar.

Fork behavior is role-aware:

• Fork from a user message → copies all messages before it
• Fork from an assistant message → copies up to and including it

The fork inherits the source conversation’s config overrides and context strategy. If the source conversation isn’t in a group, QARK creates a new group and pins the original to it — keeping related conversations together.

Per-conversation configuration

Every conversation can override its agent defaults via the Info Panel → Config tab:

Setting	What you can override
Agent	Switch to a different agent (auto-enables its required tools)
Model & provider	Any connected model, mid-conversation
System prompt	Append to or replace the agent’s prompt
Temperature, max_tokens	Tune generation behavior
Thinking	Enable/disable chain-of-thought reasoning
Enabled tools	Toggle individual built-in, MCP, and agent-tools
Context strategy	auto_compact, last_n, first_n, all, none, or token_budget — with sub-parameters
RAG settings	Override embedding model, RAG gen model, reranker, similarity threshold
Image/video generation	Override generation model and provider
Unix working directory	Set per-conversation working directory for shell commands
Agent-tool overrides	Per-sub-agent: override tools, system prompt, provider, model, LLM params
Additional LLM params	top_p, frequency_penalty, presence_penalty, reasoning_effort, seed — driven by model registry

Override dots mark every parameter that differs from the agent baseline. Changes debounce-save after 400ms.

Auto-naming

QARK generates conversation titles using an embedded Phi-3.5 Mini model running locally — no API call, no cost. For short conversations (6 messages or fewer), it reads all messages. For longer ones, it uses the first user message plus the last 3 exchanges.

Rename manually by double-clicking the title in the sidebar. Regenerate Name in the context menu generates a fresh title.

Search

FTS5 full-text search indexes every message across all conversations. Results are ranked: title and description matches appear first, then message content matches. Each result shows a snippet (first 200 characters) and links directly to the message.

Search excludes archived and trashed conversations. Maximum 50 results per query.

Export

Export any conversation in three formats:

Format	Details
Markdown	.md file with message roles, timestamps, and code blocks preserved
HTML	Styled document, renders in any browser
PDF	Generated via headless browser (Chrome, Brave, Edge). Creates a {name}_assets/ folder for embedded images and generated files

Exports include all branches and regenerations at each message position — not just the active thread. You can also export an entire group (all conversations in a folder) or a single message.

Archive and trash

Two-stage soft-delete:

• Archive — hides from the sidebar. Remains searchable. Restore anytime from the Archive view. Removed from its group.
• Trash — soft-deletes with a timestamp. Appears in the Trash view. Restore or permanently delete. Nothing is lost until you explicitly empty the trash.

Permanently deleting a conversation also cleans up associated attachment, document, and media directories.

Batch operations

Select multiple conversations to act on them together:

• Cmd+Click — toggle individual conversations
• Shift+Click — select a contiguous range

The selection bar appears with available actions:

Action	Effect
Group	Create a new group and move selected conversations into it
Move	Move to an existing group
Archive	Archive all selected
Trash	Move all selected to trash
Restore	Restore from trash or archive

All batch operations are reversible — archived conversations can be unarchived, trashed ones can be restored.