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/btw (alias /side) asks a quick side question about the current session without adding it to conversation history. It is modeled after Claude Code’s /btw, adapted to OpenClaw’s Gateway and multi-channel architecture. The two side-question contracts are deliberately separate. BTW is a one-shot question on the session’s actual model, preserving harness behavior and Codex thread-fork continuity for channel ingress (WhatsApp, Telegram, and Discord), the TUI, and embedded tui --local; the TUI stays on BTW by design. The companion is a persistent, read-only RPC thread for Control UI-class clients. Channels cannot use the companion because they do not have an RPC connection.

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What it does

  1. Snapshots the current session as background context (including any in-flight main-run prompt).
  2. Runs a separate, one-shot side query telling the model to answer only the side question and not resume or steer the main task.
  3. Delivers the answer as a live side result, not a normal assistant message.
  4. Never writes the question or answer to session history or chat.history.
The main run, if one is active, is left untouched. For Codex harness sessions, BTW forks the active Codex app-server thread into an ephemeral child thread instead of running a separate provider call. This keeps Codex OAuth and native tool/thread behavior intact, and the forked thread keeps the parent thread’s current approval policy, sandbox, and native tool surface. The forked thread gets a boundary prompt telling the model that everything before it is inherited reference context, not active instructions, and that only messages after the boundary are live. /btw requires an existing Codex thread; send a normal message first. For CLI runtime aliases, BTW invokes the owning CLI backend in one-shot side-question mode: it seeds sanitized conversation context into a fresh CLI invocation with tool bundling and reusable session state disabled, and adds any no-resume/no-tools flags the backend supports. Direct (non-CLI) runtimes use a direct one-shot provider call instead.

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What it does not do

/btw does not create a durable session, continue the unfinished main task, or persist question/answer data to transcript history. Detached BTW results do not survive a reload. The Control UI companion can rehydrate its in-memory thread after a reload, but the thread is cleared by a session reset, Gateway restart, idle expiry, or the rail’s clear button.

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Delivery model

Normal assistant chat uses the Gateway chat event. Detached BTW uses a separate chat.side_result event so clients cannot mistake it for regular conversation history. The Control UI does not consume that event; it calls the session companion RPCs and renders their bounded exchange state in the rail.

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Surface behavior

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Selection popup (Control UI)

Highlighting text inside a chat message in the Control UI opens a small selection popup with two actions:
  • More details immediately asks the session rail companion to explain the highlighted text in the context of the current session.
  • Ask in side chat opens the rail and pre-fills its composer with a quoted draft so you can type your own question about the selection.
Both actions follow normal /btw semantics: the question and answer stay out of session history and the main run is left untouched.

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When to use it

Use /btw for a quick clarification, a factual side answer while a long run is still in progress, or a temporary answer that should not enter future session context.
For anything you want to become part of the session’s future working context, ask normally in the main session instead.

Slash commands

Native command catalog and chat directives.

Thinking levels

Reasoning effort levels for the side-question model call.

Session

Session keys, history, and persistence semantics.

Steer command

Inject a steering message into the active run without ending it.