Feedback on Assistant feature usability

[rgov]

I've been using Zed intermittently for a couple of months but haven't really delved into the Assistant features yet. I wanted to make a simple refactoring of an open source codebase this weekend so I thought it was a good time to attempt it.

Unfortunately I didn't have a smooth experience with Zed 0.175.5. I am usually able to figure things out myself but had to read the manual to understand this part of the editor.

1. It wasn't greatly obvious how to even bring up the Assistant:
   a. My first choice of icon was the ✨ near the upper right, but this opens up Inline Assist which is for generating code.
   b. I clicked the GitHub Copilot icon at the bottom, but this is for enabling/disabling predictive autocomplete.
   c. I checked the View menu which has several different Panel shortcuts... but no Assistant Panel.
   d. Finally I read TFM which says "To open the assistant panel, toggle the right dock..." Not sure how I would ever have known this?
   e. The "assistant: new context" command also works, though the naming is not straightforward.
   f. There is a button! The exact same ✨ icon in the bottom right does something different than the one in the upper right.

2. I gave some prompt assuming the assistant would have access not only the document but the whole open project. This turned out to be wrong, I have to add files with /file etc. (Or I just learned there's a "+" button.) I think a default prompt that at least includes the file that's open in the editor seems like a good place to start?

3. Merging message blocks or re-assigning roles seem like advanced features. Without discounting the value of being able to do this, it did cause confusion: What does "System" mean? How do I split this back after I accidentally merged it? It would be nice to have a more familiar mode for users accustomed to a ChatGPT-type interface where only the queries are editable.