Feature Request: Create split working pane + discussion pane (part of same chat)
OpenAI Developer Community
May 17, 2026
Hi Sunny,
1. What are you ultimately trying to accomplish, in your own words?
What we would like to see a way to ask a ‘side-bar’ type question (such as definitions or “show me an example of…”) and receive clarifying answers before returning to the primary conversation.
2. What do you do today instead, and what about that isn’t working for you ?
It isn’t that it’s not working, it is just inefficient for real work loads. Some of our AI conversations take weeks and thousands of lines long but much of that is clarification and definitions and such. To maintain the focus of the conversation, there is much scrolling and requesting re-output of previous data .
3. If we solved this perfectly, what would be different for you or your te am?
What we would like to see perhaps (my high-level perspective) is maybe a button that could open a side panel with its own input field where simple questions can be posed related to the bigger conversation (such as: Please define X,Y,Z in this context). I can’t really ask the question in a different window because it will be in a different context and possibly have different meanings .
In short, A split-pane style layout may act as such:
One side stays “pinned” to the current working data/conversation
Image review
Spreadsheet fields
Formulas
Reference values
While the other side handles:
Discussion
Clarifications
Side questions/thoughts
Strategy comments
I appreciate you taking the time to review and consider my idea.
-Very respectfully,
Steve
Discussion in the ATmosphere