Ask and Explain
Question the pull request in front of you, or select any snippet in the diff and have just that explained in place. Both Pro.
Two ways to interrogate the change in front of you without leaving the diff. Both are Pro features; on Basic they stay visible and open an upgrade prompt.
#Ask — a conversation about this pull request
Ask is a tab beside the diff. The pull request's diff and its description are supplied as context, so you can ask about the change itself:
- Does this handle the empty-list case?
- What breaks if this migration runs twice?
- Why would the author have moved this out of the service layer?
Each pull request keeps its own thread, so returning to a review later means returning to the conversation you were having about it. From the pull-request detail panel, Ask about this PR opens the tab with your question already in the box.
Answers name their sources — the repository index, and any knowledge base or MCP server that contributed. See Knowledge bases and MCP servers.
Ask is scoped to the pull request. For questions about the repository as a whole, use Analyze Project.
#Explain — this snippet, right here
Select any code in the diff and a small Explain button appears next to the selection. Click it and the explanation streams into an overlay anchored where you were reading.
It never runs on its own: selecting code only arms the button, and nothing is sent anywhere until you click. That keeps a stray double-click from spending a request.
Explain is deliberately narrow — it explains the snippet you highlighted, not the whole file. When a question outgrows the selection, move to Ask.
#Turning them off
Settings → Features has an AI Ask / Explain / Chat switch that disables both surfaces outright, for when you want a review session with no conversational AI in it at all.
#Where the question goes
To the AI backend assigned to Chats and explanations in Settings → Model routing — a local model, or your own cloud provider key. Never to DiffGuardian's servers. See Choosing an AI backend.