How the Knowledge Base works
A knowledge base is a named collection of content that Elie has indexed, so people can ask it questions and get answers that cite their sources. Here is how the pieces fit together.
What a knowledge base holds
You create one from Knowledge Base in the left rail, and it asks for only a Name and a Description. Retrieval, generation, safety and language options start from sensible defaults that you tune afterwards on Settings.
Three ways content gets in
| What you add | Where you add it | How it behaves afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| Individual files | Documents, using Upload documents | Badged Manual upload. Replace one later with Upload new version. |
| A connection to another system | Sources, then IntELIEKonnect | Pulls documents in on its own, or on demand with Fetch now, badged IntELIEKonnect. |
| Curated question-and-answer pairs | Q&A | Only the question is matched against what someone asks; the answer is returned word for word and marked Curated answer. |
A source is that middle row: a connected import connector that keeps the knowledge base topped up, rather than a one-off upload.
From a file to an answer
Nothing is answerable the moment it lands. Each item runs through an ingest job — Queued while it waits, Processing while a worker works through Parsing, Chunking, Deduplicating, Embedding and Indexing, then Indexed or Failed. Only indexed content can be retrieved, so a document listed on Documents may not be answering questions yet. Ingest status shows which stage each item reached.
Where asking fits
Asking happens in chat. Overview in the left rail is the ask bar plus your knowledge-base cards; inside a knowledge base, Open chat in the header opens the same conversation. Each question is scoped to one knowledge base — you cannot ask across all of them.
An answer uses only retrieved content, lists the sources it used so you can open the exact passage, and says when it has nothing solid to answer from. Retrieval is filtered to what the person asking is allowed to see, so two people can ask the same question and get different answers.
Next
- Managing sources — connecting a connector.
- Checking ingest status — reading the stages and states.
- Creating a knowledge base — the first thing to do.