Adapted community discussion: Paraphrased and condensed from an anonymized public OpenClaw Discord support conversation from September 2026. Technical guidance was reviewed for OpenClaw 2026.9.3.
I can see the new split view in Control UI. Can I put two different agents side by side, one in each pane? How do I set that up?
Yes. Each pane is an independent session. Open Agent A’s chat, use the split control in the title bar, and choose Split right or Split below. Put Agent B’s session in the new pane with its session or agent picker, or drag Agent B’s session from the sidebar into the pane. Click a pane before sending because each pane has its own transcript, composer, tools, and approvals. Split view does not create the agents; they need to be configured first.
Where is the right pane’s session or agent picker? I do not see one.
Good catch. I described that incorrectly: there is no separate picker inside the right pane. Click inside the right pane to make it active, then use the agent switcher and session list in the left sidebar. The choice applies to the active pane and leaves the other pane unchanged. You can also drag an existing session row from the sidebar into the center of the right pane; dropping it on an edge creates another split.
That almost works. I can change the agent on the right, but it opens one of that agent’s previous sessions. If I click Add new session, it leaves split view and opens a full-page session.
The sidebar’s Add new session action is page-level. For a fresh session in the right pane, click that pane’s composer, type /new, and press Enter. Control UI creates and switches the active pane to a fresh dashboard session for the currently selected agent, leaving the other pane in place. Use /reset when you want to reset the current session in place instead. OpenClaw 2026.9.3 notes one exception: with session.dmScope: "main" on an agent’s main session, /new resets that main session in place.
That worked. One related question: what does it mean when the new Control UI shows a session with sub-sessions?
That is a parent session with child or subagent sessions. The parent is the normal conversation. When it delegates work to a subagent or background task, OpenClaw creates a child with its own transcript and execution context, then reports the result to the parent. Control UI nests those children so you can inspect them. They are not extra split panes or duplicate conversations; use split view for persistent side-by-side agents.