AI sidebar & skills

The AI sidebar is Trace's chat copilot. Open it with Ctrl/Cmd+K from anywhere in the app.

What the sidebar can do

• Answer questions about the page you're currently viewing.
• Search your indexed browsing history in plain language (see Memory & search).
• Take notes or highlight passages (see Notes & highlights).
• Run any on-demand skill with one click.
• Hand off multi-step tasks to the navigation agent.

It uses whichever AI provider you've configured in Settings; see Choosing your AI.

On-demand skills

Skills are one-click chips that turn the sidebar into a specialized tool: summarize the page, extract quotes, draft an email, grade an essay, and dozens more. Clicking a skill either fills the chat input for you to edit before sending, or sends the request immediately, depending on the skill.

Skills are organized by persona, and the persona picker in the sidebar and Agents panel decides which chips you see by default:

• General: summarizing, comparing, note-taking, and everyday research skills.
• Student: study guides, citations, concept explainers, reading-level checks.
• Teacher: lesson plans, quiz generators, differentiation, essay grading.
• Professional: workplace-oriented drafting and research skills.
• Researcher: deeper research and synthesis skills.

Switching persona doesn't hide anything permanently, it just changes which chips are shown first. Any skill can still be triggered by describing what you want directly in chat.

Note:

Some skills (like tracking a page or handing off a browser task) ask for a confirmation before they run, especially anything that changes something outside of just answering a question. You'll see exactly what's about to happen and can approve or decline it.

Next steps

• Navigation agent covers the browser automation skills specifically.
• Watchdogs covers the "track this page" skill in more depth.