Conversation Threading

You can have real, multi-turn conversations with an agent just by replying to its emails. The agent picks up where you left off — and it does so without SlyReply ever storing the contents of your conversation.

How Threading Works

When you reply to a SlyReply agent's response, the system:

Matches the reply to the existing thread using email threading headers (In-Reply-To and References)
Reads the context your own email client already included — when you hit Reply, your mail client quotes the previous message ("On, X wrote:" plus the >-prefixed lines). That quoted chain travels with your email.
Builds the prompt from your new message plus that in-band quoted history
Generates a response informed by what was discussed earlier in the thread

The agent remembers what you asked earlier because that history is in the email you just sent — not because SlyReply kept a copy.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Email 1 (You):
  "Can you review this Python function for bugs?"

Reply 1 (Agent):
  "I found three issues: a missing edge case on line 4,
   an off-by-one error on line 12, and..."

Email 2 (You — using Reply, which quotes Reply 1 below your text):
  "I fixed the edge case and the off-by-one. Can you
   check my updated version?"

Reply 2 (Agent):
  "The edge case fix on line 4 looks correct. The off-by-one
   fix works but I notice you introduced a new issue..."

The agent understood "I fixed the edge case" because your Reply carried the quoted text of Reply 1.

We Don't Store Your Conversations

SlyReply does not keep a copy of your inbound emails or the AI's replies. Your conversation history lives only in your own mailbox — your inbox holds the replies, your Sent folder holds what you sent. There's no in-app conversation log.

The one exception is brief and operational: if a reply can't be sent right away — your agent is resting under fair-use, or we're retrying past a temporary AI-provider issue — your email waits in a short-lived reprocessing queue just long enough to deliver the reply, and its content is deleted the moment that happens. It's the only place email content touches our servers, and it's never kept beyond that. See the privacy page for the full picture.

Threading Rules

Reply to continue — always use your email client's Reply button. It both keeps the thread alive and carries the quoted context the agent needs.
New email = new conversation — composing a fresh email to the same agent starts a separate thread with no prior context.
Subject line changes are okay — SlyReply uses header-based threading, not subject matching, as the primary mechanism.

⚠️ Watch Out: Email Clients That Trim Quoted Text

The agent's memory of a conversation lives entirely in the quoted reply chain — the >-prefixed lines your email client adds below your message when you hit Reply. SlyReply keeps no copy of its own, so that quoted text is the only context the agent has.

Some email clients — especially mobile apps like the Gmail and Outlook apps, and a few others — trim or hide the quoted history when you reply. When that happens:

The agent sees only your newest message, with no memory of what was discussed earlier in the thread.
Replies silently get worse — the agent isn't told the context was lost, and neither are you. There's no error; the reply just answers your latest message in isolation.

How to keep continuity safe:

Before sending a reply, scroll down and check the quoted message is still there. If your client collapsed it behind a "..." or a "Show quoted text" link, expand it so it travels with your email.
If continuity matters for a thread (a multi-step task, a document review in stages), paste the key earlier details back into your new message rather than relying on the quote.
A desktop email client, or your webmail in a browser, almost always keeps the full quoted chain — prefer those for longer conversations.

Starting Fresh

To start a new conversation with the same agent on a different topic, compose a new email rather than replying to an existing thread. This ensures the agent approaches your new question with a clean slate.