diff --git a/src/pages/Options.tsx b/src/pages/Options.tsx
index 983293c..a4e421d 100644
--- a/src/pages/Options.tsx
+++ b/src/pages/Options.tsx
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ export const EMBEDDING_MODELS = ["nomic-embed-text", "all-minilm"];
 export const CHAT_CONTAINER_HEIGHT_MIN = 200;
 export const CHAT_CONTAINER_HEIGHT_MAX = 500;
 
-interface LumosOptions {
+export interface LumosOptions {
   ollamaModel: string;
   ollamaEmbeddingModel: string;
   ollamaHost: string;
diff --git a/src/scripts/background.ts b/src/scripts/background.ts
index ccfb001..a6be561 100644
--- a/src/scripts/background.ts
+++ b/src/scripts/background.ts
@@ -4,7 +4,6 @@ import { StringOutputParser } from "@langchain/core/output_parsers";
 import {
   ChatPromptTemplate,
   SystemMessagePromptTemplate,
-  BaseMessagePromptTemplateLike,
 } from "@langchain/core/prompts";
 import { RunnableSequence } from "@langchain/core/runnables";
 import { ConsoleCallbackHandler } from "@langchain/core/tracers/console";
@@ -25,6 +24,7 @@ import {
   DEFAULT_KEEP_ALIVE,
   getLumosOptions,
   isMultimodal,
+  LumosOptions,
 } from "../pages/Options";
 
 interface VectorStoreMetadata {
@@ -45,6 +45,8 @@ const CLS_IMG_PROMPT =
   "Is the following prompt referring to an image or asking to describe an image?";
 const CLS_IMG_TRIGGER = "based on the image";
 
+const SYS_PROMPT_TEMPLATE = `Use the following context and the chat history when responding to the prompt.\n\nBEGIN CONTEXT\n\n{filtered_context}\n\nEND CONTEXT`;
+
 function sleep(ms: number) {
   return new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
 }
@@ -92,13 +94,22 @@ const classifyPrompt = async (
   });
 };
 
+const getChatModel = (options: LumosOptions): ChatOllama => {
+  return new ChatOllama({
+    baseUrl: options.ollamaHost,
+    model: options.ollamaModel,
+    keepAlive: DEFAULT_KEEP_ALIVE,
+    callbacks: [new ConsoleCallbackHandler()],
+  });
+};
+
 const getMessages = async (): Promise<BaseMessage[]> => {
   // the array of persisted messages includes the current prompt
   const data = await chrome.storage.session.get(["messages"]);
 
   if (data.messages) {
     const msgs = data.messages as LumosMessage[];
-    return msgs.slice(-10).map((msg: LumosMessage) => {
+    return msgs.slice(-5).map((msg: LumosMessage) => {
       return msg.sender === "user"
         ? new HumanMessage({
             content: msg.message,
@@ -171,18 +182,9 @@ chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(async (request) => {
       return executeCalculatorTool(prompt);
     }
 
-    // create prompt
-    const chatPrompt = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages(await getMessages());
-
-    // create model
-    const model = new ChatOllama({
-      baseUrl: options.ollamaHost,
-      model: options.ollamaModel,
-      keepAlive: DEFAULT_KEEP_ALIVE,
-      callbacks: [new ConsoleCallbackHandler()],
-    });
-
     // create chain
+    const chatPrompt = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages(await getMessages());
+    const model = getChatModel(options);
     const chain = chatPrompt.pipe(model).pipe(new StringOutputParser());
 
     // stream response chunks
@@ -282,22 +284,6 @@ chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(async (request) => {
       return executeCalculatorTool(prompt);
     }
 
-    const template = `Use only the following context when responding to the prompt. Don't use any other knowledge.\n\nBEGIN CONTEXT\n\n{filtered_context}\n\nEND CONTEXT`;
-    let messages: BaseMessagePromptTemplateLike[] = [
-      SystemMessagePromptTemplate.fromTemplate(template),
-    ];
-    messages = messages.concat(await getMessages());
-    // TODO: append image data in new message
-    const chatPrompt = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages(messages);
-
-    // create model and bind base64 encoded image data
-    const model = new ChatOllama({
-      baseUrl: options.ollamaHost,
-      model: options.ollamaModel,
-      keepAlive: DEFAULT_KEEP_ALIVE,
-      callbacks: [new ConsoleCallbackHandler()],
-    });
-
     // check if vector store already exists for url
     let vectorStore: EnhancedMemoryVectorStore;
     let documentsCount: number;
@@ -359,13 +345,19 @@ chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(async (request) => {
       }
     }
 
+    // create chain
     const retriever = vectorStore.asRetriever({
       k: computeK(documentsCount),
       searchType: "hybrid",
       callbacks: [new ConsoleCallbackHandler()],
     });
 
-    // create chain
+    const chatPrompt = ChatPromptTemplate.fromMessages([
+      SystemMessagePromptTemplate.fromTemplate(SYS_PROMPT_TEMPLATE),
+      ...(await getMessages()),
+    ]);
+
+    const model = getChatModel(options);
     const chain = RunnableSequence.from([
       {
         filtered_context: retriever.pipe(formatDocumentsAsString),
@@ -376,7 +368,7 @@ chrome.runtime.onMessage.addListener(async (request) => {
     ]);
 
     // stream response chunks
-    const stream = await chain.stream("");
+    const stream = await chain.stream(prompt);
     streamChunks(stream);
   }