Feature Request: Inline Side Notes
While reading longer ChatGPT responses, I often have questions or thoughts about a specific sentence or paragraph before I’ve finished reading the full response.
Currently, asking that question means replying in the main conversation. This can redirect the thread away from the original subject and make a focused conversation increasingly cluttered.
I propose an Inline Side Notes feature.
A user could highlight or tap a specific part of a ChatGPT response and choose “Ask as Side Note.”
This would open a small contextual conversation attached directly to that passage. The user could ask one or more questions there, close the side note, and continue reading exactly where they left off.
The important distinction is context isolation: the side conversation should not automatically redirect or clutter the main conversation.
If something important comes out of the side discussion, the user could choose “Add conclusion to main chat.”
The basic flow would be:
Select passage → Ask as Side Note → Explore locally → Close → Continue reading
And optionally:
Side Note → Add conclusion to main chat
This would make ChatGPT responses behave more like interactive documents rather than purely linear chat messages. It could be especially useful for research, studying, coding, planning, and any conversation involving detailed responses.
I’m aware that related ideas such as conversation branching and selected-text clarification have been proposed before. The particular interaction I’m proposing combines passage-level anchoring, isolated side-note context, returning to the exact reading position, and deliberate promotion of useful conclusions back into the main conversation.
I independently arrived at this formulation through my own use of ChatGPT and wanted to formally document and contribute the idea.
— T3