determining, by a first party associated with a virtual agent involved in a chat session with a second party, that the virtual agent associated with the first party is to provide, via a messaging application, content to the second party;

in response to determining that the virtual agent is to provide the content to the second party, generating by the first party associated with the virtual agent a reference to the content for display by the message application as web content instead of by a separate web browser application, wherein a dynamic portion included in the reference generated by the first party includes information for assisting in a retrieval of the content associated with the reference and an application identifier of the message application to cause the messaging application of the second party to display the content instead of the separate web browser application configured to otherwise display the web content when referenced without the application identifier of the message application;

in response to receiving, from the second party, a request that includes the reference, retrieving, by the first party, the content using at least a portion of the dynamic portion; and

providing, by the first party, the content to the messaging application for display within a second tab or window different from a first tab or window of the messaging application based on the application identifier identifying the messaging application, wherein the virtual agent is provided in the first tab or window dedicated to providing the virtual agent such that the first tab or window providing the virtual agent does not function as a separate general purpose web browser.