Side question command (/btw)

Ask a quick contextual question without interrupting an in-progress agent turn or adding messages to your main conversation history.

Overview

When you’re in the middle of a multi-step task, you might need a quick reminder about something the agent already discussed, such as a function signature it read earlier, a decision it made, or a command flag it used. Asking that question in the main chat adds extra turns to the conversation trajectory and consumes context window capacity on every subsequent turn.

The /btw command runs an ephemeral, single-turn side query in the background:

• Inherits your conversation context: the side query is branched from your current conversation, so it can answer questions about anything already discussed in the active session.
• Answers without tools: tools are disabled for the side query, so it can’t read files, run commands, or search your workspace. It answers from the conversation context and the model’s own knowledge in a single response.
• Ask while streaming: you can invoke /btw even while the primary agent is actively generating a response, running tests, or executing long-running tools.
• No conversation history growth: neither your /btw question nor its answer is added to the main conversation, so later turns don’t pay for it. The temporary branch is deleted once the answer arrives.

Ask a side question

You can ask a side question across Antigravity surfaces.

Antigravity app

Antigravity app

Once a conversation is active (that is, after you’ve sent your first message), type /btw followed by your question in the composer:

/btw Which file did you say defines the UserSession interface?

The answer opens in a floating Side Question panel above the composer and isn’t added to your conversation. From the panel you can:

• Step through earlier side questions with the previous (<) and next (>) history controls, shown as 1/N.
• Copy the question and answer to your clipboard.
• Delete the current side question.
• Minimize the panel. Minimized side questions appear as an N Side Question(s) pill in the composer footer; select it to reopen the panel.

Antigravity CLI

Antigravity CLI

Type /btw followed by your question in the prompt box. If you haven’t started a conversation yet, the CLI creates one for you:

/btw Which file did you say defines the UserSession interface?

The response appears in a collapsible /btw card above the prompt box while your main conversation continues uninterrupted. Only one /btw question can be in flight at a time; if you ask another before the first finishes, the CLI asks you to wait.

Note

/btw isn’t available in headless mode (-p or --print), because a one-shot run has no in-progress turn to ask alongside.

Browse and manage /btw cards in the CLI

In the Antigravity CLI, /btw responses are stored in an ephemeral session history so you can revisit earlier side answers at any time during your conversation.

Reopen previous /btw answers

To reopen the most recent /btw card without asking a new question, run /btw with no arguments:

/btw

Note

If you haven’t asked any /btw questions in the current session yet, running bare /btw displays Usage: /btw <question>.

Card navigation controls

When a /btw card is visible in the CLI, use the following keyboard shortcuts:

Key	Action
Tab	Expand a truncated answer or collapse an expanded card.
↑ / ↓	Scroll up or down by one line inside an expanded card when the answer exceeds the viewport height. Otherwise, these keys keep their usual prompt-history behavior.
PgUp / PgDn	Scroll up or down by one page inside an expanded card.
← / →	Cycle through previous and next /btw responses in the current session.
Esc	Dismiss the /btw card, or cancel an in-flight /btw generation.
Enter	Dismiss the /btw card when the prompt box is empty. If you’ve typed a prompt, Enter submits it as usual.

Copy a /btw response to the clipboard

In the Antigravity CLI, you can copy the most recent /btw answer directly to your system clipboard without copying the main agent’s last response.

Run the /copy command with the btw argument:

/copy btw

The CLI copies the full Markdown text of the /btw answer that’s currently on screen (or the most recent answer if you’ve already dismissed the card), even if the card is collapsed or scrolled, and displays a confirmation message.

Next steps

Explore related commands for managing your conversation context and workflow:

• Context command (/context): visualize how your main conversation consumes the model’s context window.
• Slash commands overview: browse all cross-surface slash commands in Google Antigravity.
• CLI reference: view all available CLI slash commands and keyboard shortcuts.