What is Sidelong?
Sidelong is a chat interface that lays out each question and answer as a page in a horizontal deck, rather than adding every exchange to a long scrolling transcript. It uses colors to group likely follow-ups by topic, helping people navigate extended conversations. Chat runs through the Claude Code CLI, while Ollama creates topic embeddings locally. It is for people who want to keep multiple question threads organized and can run the required local software.
Sidelong Features:
Horizontal Deck: Each exchange gets its own page, with the current page open in the center and earlier pages reduced to clickable strips.
Topic Colors: Pages receive color marks based on topic similarity, with saturation indicating the classifier’s confidence in a match.
Local Embeddings: Ollama computes topic embeddings on the user’s machine, and those embeddings do not leave that machine.
Claude CLI Chat: Questions are sent through the logged-in Claude Code CLI, using the Claude subscription rather than an API key.
Read-Only File Access: The chat session can read local files using Read, Glob, and Grep, and shows file reads as the answer streams.
Saved Decks: Decks persist in browser IndexedDB, and users can export or import them as JSON, save and reset, or start a new deck.
Sidelong Benefits:
Find Threads Faster: Color cues and compact page strips make it easier to spot a conversation among many exchanges without rereading the whole deck.
Keep Context: Returning to a saved page lets users continue its Claude session instead of having to reconstruct the earlier conversation.
See File Activity: Visible read lines make it easier to tell which local files the session consulted while forming an answer.
Avoid API Setup: Using an existing Claude Code login avoids configuring a separate API key, though a Claude subscription is still required.
Keep Embeddings Local: Local embedding processing keeps the topic-classification data on the user’s machine rather than sending it to a remote embedding service.
Use Cases:
Ongoing Research: Keep questions about several research topics in one deck, then use the colored strips to return to a relevant thread.
Project Follow-Ups: Separate successive questions about a project into topic-colored pages while continuing the same Claude session.
Local Code Questions: Ask Claude about local project files with its read-only file tools and see which files it reads during the response.
Long Chat Sessions: Use the page layout to revisit earlier exchanges in a lengthy session without navigating a continuous scrolling transcript.
Portable Conversation Decks: Export a deck to JSON to save a copy, or import a JSON deck to bring its pages back into the app.