keegan introduced a new docked composer for AI bot conversations, designed to keep the input field persistent at the bottom of the topic to facilitate continuous chat-like interactions. This change was initially behind an upcoming changes flag (ai_bot_enable_docked_composer) but has since been promoted to beta and is expected to become a permanent feature.
The primary source of friction in the discussion is the default behavior where pressing Enter submits the message rather than creating a new line. Users such as Lilly, tobiaseigen, and one1 expressed strong dissatisfaction with this “chat-style” shortcut, arguing that it disrupts muscle memory, causes accidental submissions of incomplete thoughts, and is inconsistent with the rest of Discourse. tobiaseigen noted that this behavior interferes with using bullet points and autocomplete features, while one1 highlighted the lack of forgiveness for unintentional sends on troubleshooting sites like ask.discourse.org.
In response to this feedback, Lilly proposed a site-wide admin setting to toggle the Enter-to-submit behavior, submitting a PR to implement it. However, the team decided a user-level preference would be more appropriate. keegan merged an update moving the send shortcut to a core user setting, allowing users to choose between enter or command-enter (or ctrl-enter) to submit messages. This setting is accessible via User Preferences > Interface (or Fonts & Appearance on some instances). While this resolves the immediate issue of forced chat shortcuts, tobiaseigen remains concerned about the docked composer replacing the standard reply flow entirely, expressing hope that the ability to disable the docked composer will remain available.
We’re improving AI bot conversations with a new docked composer, designed to make chatting with the bot feel more seamless.
Instead of clicking Reply each time you want to continue the conversation, the composer now stays available at the bottom of the topic. You can type your next message right away, making AI bot conversations feel closer to a continuous chat experience.
What’s changing
A persistent composer is shown in AI bot conversations
You can continue chatting without repeatedly opening the reply composer
The interface is better suited for back-and-forth AI conversations
The existing composer experience remains available when the change is disabled
Why we’re making this change
AI bot conversations often involve several quick follow-up questions. The previous reply flow worked, but it added friction to that back-and-forth.
The docked composer keeps the input close at hand so conversations can continue more naturally.
Try it out
This change is currently behind an upcoming changes flag.
Admins can enable it from:
Admin → Settings → Upcoming changes
ai_bot_enable_docked_composer
Feedback
Please share any feedback, issues, or questions in this topic. We’re especially interested in hearing how the new composer feels during longer AI bot conversations.
is there any way to suppress the enter as submit? i absolutely hate that feature and i can’t get around it - it is not consistent with the rest of Discourse. i want to submit with the paper-plane icon only.
Samesies. I really hope this becomes an optional setting because I really like communicating with my AI in full sentences and paragraphs, and often with code blocks. To me these AI convos are not chat.
It is possible to change your chat prefs to reverse the default cmd-enter behavior. By default in chat when you press enter you submit the chat message, and when you hold cmd when pressing enter you get line breaks. But then you are slowing yourself down when you are chatting with someone!
Is there a reason this was disabled here on Meta? It was enabled at one point but now has the old reply button style. Just curious of the rationale straight from the source
No particular reason It looks like this was accidentally toggled off by a team member. We’ve turned it back on. Also, the upcoming change has now been bumped to beta now
I spent lots of time with it today and have disabled it for now. I love the impulse behind it, to make chatting more efficient/quicker. But this does not work for me. If anything, I’d like the UI to slow me down!
Hitting RETURN submits my message instead of starting a new line. This causes a frantic situation of trying to stop the bot from responding. In more than one situation I shared something that I had not yet finished writing.
When I am engaging with AI, I want to be deliberate and thoughtful, which this new UI does not encourage.
Generally I am not enjoying having a third composer interface to learn how to use. I liked the way it worked previously as though I were engaging in a topic or PM with the bot.
I use the official ask.discourse.org for complicated troubleshooting problems and now this change is driving me crazy because I keep doing what I’ve been doing all along and it botches things. I can’t even go back and edit my unintentionally submitted reply.
I can understant that for some sites this change is good. But it’s very annoying on the ask. service (which I appreciate greatly, btw!!!)
IIRC Shift + enter creates a newline, if that’s what you’re looking for. But perhaps this should be a user preference. For example, MS Teams has a similar option when sending chat messages.
i have a theme component fix for the Enter button submit issue for Discourse AI bot messages here:
i will probably submit a PR later today that adds an Discourse AI Admin site setting to toggle the Enter button behaviour on or off for the bot message post submission.
the proper way to do this would be to submit a PR that gives a user-preference setting to change it for all message submissions (including non-bot perhaps), not just the first one when the docked composer is disabled - just like the chat setting. but i don’t feel like writing that much code and nobody is paying me for this lol.
I just merged an update (should be deployed here soon) which moves the send shortcut to a core user setting and made use of it for the AI bot conversations docked composer.
Is it possible to use that preference on ask.discourse.com without manually entering /my/preferences/interface? It feels like a relevant setting for that site.
