What You’ll Learn
- How file search works behind the scenes
- How to get the best results from uploaded files
- What types of questions work well
- How to troubleshoot when the AI misses something
How It Works
When you upload a file:- Chunking - The file is split into meaningful sections
- Embedding - Each section is converted to a vector representation
- Indexing - Vectors are stored for fast similarity search
- Ready - The file is available for AI reference
- Your question is converted to a vector
- The system finds the most similar file sections
- Relevant sections are included in the AI’s context
- The AI references specific content in its response
What This Means in Practice
You don’t need to specify page numbers or sections. Just ask your question naturally:Types of Questions That Work Well
Specific Fact Retrieval
Analysis Based on Document Content
Cross-Document Questions
Summarization
Tips for Best Results
Be specific in your questions
Better: “What does the contract say about liability limits?” Worse: “Tell me about the contract.”Reference the file when helpful
Ask follow-up questions
If the first answer doesn’t cover what you need:Upload clean documents
- PDFs with actual text (not scanned images) work best
- Well-structured documents with headings are easier to chunk accurately
- Remove cover pages and appendices that aren’t relevant
Troubleshooting
AI doesn’t reference the file
- Make sure the file uploaded successfully (check the Files section)
- Be more explicit: “Based on the uploaded [filename]…”
- The question might not be related enough to trigger file retrieval
AI references wrong section
- Ask more specifically: “In the section about [topic]…”
- Rephrase your question with terms used in the document
Large documents feel incomplete
- Very large files have more content than can fit in one context window
- Ask focused questions about specific sections rather than “summarize everything”
- Break very large files into smaller, topic-specific uploads if needed

