An agent with no knowledge base answers from the model's general training — which means it improvises about your prices, your hours and your policies. The knowledge base is how you stop that.
Three kinds of source: a URL for a page you keep updated, a File for a document you already have, and Text for rules that are written down nowhere else.
Before you start
- Adding a source here does not connect it to anything. You attach it to an agent afterwards, from the agent's Knowledge base card — see Agents.
- Have the page address, the file, or the text ready. Nothing else is required.
Steps
- 1
Pick a source type
The three buttons at the top are Add URL, Add File and Create Text. Which one you choose decides how the content stays current, so it matters more than it looks.
Prefer Add URL whenever the content already lives on a page you maintain. It is the only source that keeps itself up to date.
The three knowledge base source buttons - 2
Add a page by URL
Paste the address, then set Sync Frequency — Weekly or Monthly — and a Sync Interval between 1 and 12. Together they mean "re-read this page every N weeks/months", so the agent follows the live page rather than a copy.
Leave the sync fields empty and the page is read exactly once. Anything you change on that page afterwards will never reach the agent.
Adding a URL source with its sync settings - 3
Upload a document
Add File reads the document once, at upload. There is no re-sync for files at all — when you revise the document, upload it again.
Uploading a file as a source - 4
Write text directly
Create Text asks for a Text Name and the Text Content. The name is how you find it later; the content is what the agent quotes, so write it as plain answers rather than internal notes.
Text is the right home for the things no page states: refund windows, what the agent must refuse, how to escalate. Write it the way you would answer a customer.
Creating a text source - 5
Check the list
Each row shows Last Synced — Never means it has not been read yet — and Dependent Agents, which is how you see whether a source is actually in use.
A source with no dependent agents is doing nothing. Attach it from the agent's Knowledge base card.
The knowledge base list
Good to know
- Copy Document ID from the row menu; support asks for it when a source behaves oddly.
- Deleting a source removes it from every agent using it, immediately.
- Long documents work better split into a few focused sources than one large file — the agent retrieves the relevant piece rather than the whole thing.
- If an agent still answers wrongly after you attach a source, check that the answer is actually written in it. The agent quotes; it does not infer.