# Private Chat

**Private Chat** is Flashback’s text-to-text conversational interface for secure interaction with AI models connected through the Cloud and AI Gateway.

It is designed for organizations that want centralized governance, repository-scoped AI access, and usage observability.

## What Private Chat is

Private Chat is a standard multi-turn chat experience where users can:

* select an environment,
* prompt available AI models,
* continue context-aware conversations,
* and monitor usage over time.

## Required setup before using Private Chat

Private Chat depends on your gateway setup. Before using it, you must have:

1. an **AI/LLM resource** configured,
2. attached to a **repository**,
3. and that repository inside a **workspace**.

Without this chain (workspace → repository → AI resource), Private Chat cannot execute model calls.

## Environment selection model

Before starting a conversation, users select an environment that maps to:

* **Workspace + Repository**

This determines:

* which providers/models are available,
* which policies are enforced,
* and which permissions apply.

## Model availability

Private Chat exposes models from the providers connected to the selected repository.

Example:

* if an OpenAI resource is connected to the selected repository, users can access OpenAI models available through that configured endpoint.

This same logic applies to other connected providers.

## Usage and consumption

Private Chat consumes underlying provider resources through your Flashback setup. Depending on your configuration and credits, organizations can optimize cost by routing usage through preferred providers or existing cloud credits.

## Built-in visibility

Private Chat includes quick usage visibility (for example, recent consumption windows such as last 7 days), while organization-wide analytics are available in the **Organization → Statistics** pages.

## Governance and policy enforcement

Private Chat usage is governed by policy scopes defined in the platform:

* organization,
* workspace,
* repository.

This allows privacy and compliance controls to apply consistently to conversational traffic.

## Current and upcoming capabilities

Private Chat currently supports core conversation workflows and model interaction. Roadmap-oriented capabilities include:

* longer-term memory behavior,
* deeper storage-backed memory,
* richer agent-based interactions across conversations.

## API mapping

See: [Conversation API](/support-reference/platform-api-reference/conversation-api.md)


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