Ask questions

Annota Brain answers questions from the knowledge bases you select and cites the pages it used. Select at least one knowledge base whenever you want an answer based on your documents.

Start a conversation

Switch to Brain with the product switcher and select New chat. To start from a knowledge base, open it and select Ask Brain: the new chat has that knowledge base selected.
Select Add (the + button in the question box) and choose up to 10 knowledge bases under Knowledge. They stay selected for the next questions.
Type your question in Ask anything, or select one of the suggestions under the question box.
Press Enter or select Send message. Use Shift+Enter for a new line.

A question can be up to 8,000 characters. To remove a knowledge base, select the remove button on its chip in the question box, or select Clear selection in the Add menu. From the same menu you can also create a knowledge base (Create knowledge base) or open Manage knowledge bases.

Without any knowledge base, Brain answers from general knowledge, and the answer says General knowledge, not from your documents.

Choose a mode

The mode button in the question box sets how Brain works on the next question:

Mode	What it does
Think	Reasons further before answering, but slower. This is the default for a new chat.
Fast	Answers at once.

A conversation starts each question with the mode of the last question.

Follow the answer

While Brain works, a short progress line shows what it is doing, such as Searching your documents…, Reading sources…, or Writing your answer…. The answer appears block by block as it is written.

Select View activity to see each step: searches, pages read, calculations, skills read, and checks on the answer. Pages read one after another are grouped by document. When Brain has read enough for one answer, the next page it would read shows Reading limit reached; this is a limit, not an error.
Select Stop response to stop the answer. The tokens it already used are charged.
If you leave the page, Brain keeps writing. The conversation shows a spinner in the history until the answer is ready.

When a question covers many documents, for example every invoice in a knowledge base, Brain can read all of them into a table with totals. See Sources and citations.

Brain answers in the language of your question, even when the documents are in another language.

When an answer fails

Message	What to do
I couldn’t find a reliable answer in the available sources.	Name a document, a period, or the specific point you want to check.
This question took too long.	Retry, or narrow the question to a document or a specific point.
The connection was interrupted.	Select Retry to recover the answer or continue.
Out of credits.	Top up credits, or ask an organization admin to do it.
A selected knowledge base or this chat is no longer available.	Check that the knowledge base still exists and is shared with you.

You can retry the last question of a conversation with Retry. Failed answers and answers Brain could not give reliably use no credits.

Use skills in a question

Skills hold instructions that Brain follows, such as a procedure or a format. Brain uses a matching skill on its own, or you can choose up to 5 for one question: type / at the start of the question, or pick them under Skills in the Add menu. See Skills.

Tips for good questions

Select only the knowledge bases you need. Brain searches every selected knowledge base, so leaving out unrelated ones keeps the sources focused.
Name what you know. A document name, a client, a period, or a section helps Brain find the right pages.
Ask one thing at a time. Split a long request into follow-up questions. Brain keeps the earlier conversation in mind.
Say what you want back. For example a list, a table, or a short summary.
Check the sources. Brain is AI and can be wrong: open the cited pages before you rely on an answer.

Credits and weekly usage

Answers are billed by the tokens they use. Each member has a weekly Brain usage allowance in each organization, used before the organization credits. It resets every Monday at 00:00 UTC. Weekly usage at the bottom of the Brain sidebar shows how much you have used. The question box warns you when you are close to the limit, and once it is reached, answers use the organization credits. See Credit usage and Plans and credits.