Search and the assistant

Search

⌘K / Ctrl+K opens search from anywhere. It finds documents by name and by the words in their text, within the workspace you are in, and only among documents you can open. Folders and projects whose names match appear under the documents, and the last row, Ask about "…", hands what you typed to the assistant.

That includes the text inside uploaded files (PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, source files) and what images show, which is why searching for the words on a whiteboard photo finds the photo. See What gets read out of a file.

Ask Filement

Ask Filement opens the assistant. It answers questions about the documents in your current workspace, and nothing else.

• It works in steps, the way a person researches. It breaks your question into the parts it depends on and searches for each, several at once, by meaning and by the words themselves. It tries more than one wording when your files might put it differently from your question. When several documents could answer, it skims their notes and summaries first. When a passage is cut short, or the answer needs exact figures, dates or a list, it opens the document and reads the section that matters. It can also look inside a folder you name ("what's in the Q3 folder").
• It knows which version is current. When several documents are versions or copies of one another, it answers from the current one. An older draft it read gets a Newer version chip under the answer that opens the current one. The chip says Likely newer version when only Filement's own reading says so and nobody has confirmed it. Ask about history ("what did the first draft say") and it reads the older versions too.
• It checks the workspace's own map first for questions like "where does the pricing work stand", "what changed this week", "what is still undecided" or "what do we have on Acme". Filement tracks which documents are one piece of work over time, what was decided along the way and what is still open, and the assistant reads that before searching. A thread it used shows under the answer with what was decided and what is open. If you can't open every document in a piece of work, the assistant leaves its summary out.
• It stops when it can answer. Each answer has a fixed allowance of steps and reading, so a hard question takes a few more seconds instead of running on. When the allowance runs out, it answers with what it found and says what it didn't get to.
• It follows your connections. For whatever a search turns up, the assistant also sees what you connected to it and the reason you gave. So a document that uses different words still reaches the answer: a later request hanging off a status report, or a decision that supersedes a plan. Your connections and Filement's suggestions stay separate; see Relationships.
• It names the documents it used, the ones it found by searching and the ones it opened to read, so you can open the source. Under each answer one line counts them ("2 connected by a person · also read 5"); open it to see the list. The documents you connected by hand come first, in their own group, each with the relationship and the reason you wrote. Everything the search only matched comes under them. A note written on a document shows beneath it. A connection you drew therefore appears under the answer whether or not the answer mentions it, so you see what somebody said belongs with what was read.
• It shows its work. While it works you see each step as it happens: every search in its own words, "Read Pricing § Enterprise tier", "Checked connections of Q3 plan". Afterwards that folds into one line ("Searched 3 ways · read 2 documents") you can reopen. If an answer misses something, this tells you whether it searched badly or read badly.
• It trusts notes over its own reading. If a note says a document is a draft or superseded, the answer says so.
• It lists and counts from the whole set. It answers "every decision this quarter", "how many documents mention Acme" or "what did we change last week in Research" from the workspace's index of what each document is and names, not from the few documents a search ranked highest. A count it couldn't finish says "at least".
• It reads long documents whole when it needs to, such as summarising an eighty-page PDF or comparing the same clause across twenty contracts, and gives you each document's answer with the passages it rests on.
• If it finds nothing relevant, it says so plainly instead of guessing.

Asking it to change something

Ask the assistant to change anything you could change yourself and it proposes the change instead of making it: write, edit or rewrite a document, create a folder or a project, add a note, connect two documents or remove a connection, move or rename something, move something to Trash or bring it back, or put a document back to an earlier version. Each proposal appears under the answer as a card saying exactly what will happen (for an edit, the text before and after), with Apply and Discard.

• Nothing changes until you press Apply, and only you can apply what the assistant proposed to you.
• Bigger jobs come as a set. "Make a Q3 folder and move these eight files into it" is one card for the folder and one for each move, and the moves say they go into the new folder. Apply all above the cards applies the set in order; applying any one card makes whatever it goes into first. Discarding the folder discards what was going into it. With more than three cards, each is one line until you open it.
• For a new document, an edit or a version restore, Review opens the whole document as Apply would leave it, with every changed line marked, so you can read all of it first.
• Apply makes the change as you, under the same rules as doing it yourself. A locked document, a folder you can't write to, or a document someone is typing in right now refuses it, and the card says why.
• If the document has changed since the proposal and the passage it would change is gone, the card says it's out of date instead of guessing. A whole rewrite or a version restore applies only to the version it was proposed against.
• Undo on an applied card takes back exactly what that card did. Undoing a folder first undoes what was moved or created in it. Something that has changed since is left alone, and the card says so.
• Everything you applied from one conversation is also listed together in Activity, where Undo all takes it back in one go.
• Deleting means Trash, where things stay restorable for 30 days. The assistant can look in Trash to find what to bring back, but it can't delete anything for good.
• In Zoho Cliq the same proposals come as buttons, led by Apply all when there are several.

Closing the assistant keeps your conversation, and reopening it picks up where you left off; New conversation starts over. The expand button opens the same conversation as a full page, with your past conversations beside it, and the collapse button there takes it back to the panel. Earlier conversations are under Past conversations, where you can delete one or clear them all. Deleting removes the questions, the answers and what they were asked against. Anything you saved as a document stays where it is. History is your own: clearing yours never touches a colleague's. On deployments with voice enabled, you can dictate a question instead of typing it.

Asking about something in particular

The @ button next to the composer attaches things to one question, so the answer is about what you picked and not whatever the search turned up.

• The page you are on comes first: the document, folder, project or thread you were looking at when you opened the assistant.
• Search finds any document you can open.
• To attach a folder or a project, open it and use The page you are on.

The assistant reads an attached document in full. An attached folder or project arrives as a list of names, and the assistant's searches and listings stay inside it unless your question clearly reaches further. An attached thread arrives as where it stands, what was decided and what is still open, its documents in date order, and the reasons they are connected; the assistant opens the document your question turns on. It still searches the rest of the workspace when your question needs something the attachments don't cover.

Attachments belong to one question, not the whole conversation. They clear when you send, and the chips above a question show what it was asked against. You can attach up to eight at a time. If someone's access to a document changes before the answer is written, that document drops out of the answer.

Saving text as a document

The box that takes questions also takes content. Paste meeting notes, an email or a chat thread and choose Save as document. Filement saves it as a markdown document in the folder you started the conversation from, unless you pick another. If what you pasted looks like something to keep and not a question, Filement offers to save it, but it never saves unless you choose to.

How many questions you get

Ten a day, per person, resetting at midnight UTC. Search doesn't count, and neither does saving text as a document. See storage and limits.

What is used for AI

When summaries and semantic search are on, Filement sends document text to the configured AI provider in pieces, for summaries, search indexing and answers. It sends each image once, when you first add it, so a model can write down what it shows for search. It never sends a whole workspace at once. When a document leaves Trash for good, Filement deletes its text, summaries and search index entries with it.