# Select an element

Source: https://modulify.ai/docs/editor/select-element

Point at something in the preview so chat knows what you mean.

Describing a part of a page in words is slow and easy to get wrong. Instead you can click the thing itself in the preview, and it becomes context for your next chat message.

## Turn on the select tool

A small toolbar floats at the bottom centre of the preview. The cursor icon on the left is the select tool. Click it to turn it on, and click it again to turn it off.

Only one of the three preview tools runs at a time. Turning on select turns off inline text editing and commenting.

The tool is unavailable on pages that cannot host the editing bridge. The buttons go flat and the tooltip reads `Selecting and inline editing are unavailable on this page.`

## Pick elements

Move the pointer over the preview and elements highlight as you pass them. Click one and it gets a persistent outline, and a chip for it is inserted into the chat box.

The chip is named after what you clicked, so a heading reads `Heading`, a paragraph or a span reads `Text`, and there are names for `Link`, `Button`, `Image`, `Icon`, `Quote`, `Video` and others. Repeats are numbered, so a second heading becomes `Heading #2`.

The picker stays on after each click, so keep clicking to add more. Click a selected element again to drop it. A badge on the cursor button counts what you have selected.

## The ten element limit

You can hold **10 elements at once**. Past that, clicking another one raises `Selection limit reached` with the note that you can select up to 10 elements at once. Deselect something to make room.

## Find a chip again

Hover a chip in the chat box and the matching element is highlighted in the preview and scrolled into view. Moving the text cursor into a chip does the same thing, so you can check what you attached without leaving the keyboard.

## Selection is tied to a page

An element is remembered as a page plus a position in that page, so the same-looking element on another page is a different selection. Outlines only draw for the elements that belong to the page you are looking at, and stay visible even when the select tool is off.

If a selected element disappears from the page, for example because AI rewrote that section, it drops out of the selection on its own.

## Write the request

Chips are inserted at the text cursor, so you can drop one into the middle of a sentence and keep typing around it. Write what you want changed and send. You do not need to name the elements again.

```markdown
Make these two cards the same height and move the button to the bottom.
```

## Next

- [Edit text inline](/docs/editor/edit-text) is faster when you only want to change words.
- [Site chat](/docs/build/site-chat) covers writing the request itself.