---
title: Knowledge
sidebar_title: Overview & asking
description: Ysra's grounded assistant — ask about your own work, choose which sources it may use, get answers with a citation for every claim, and turn an answer into action.
---

**Knowledge** is Ysra's grounded assistant. It answers from the files, Slack
channels, Jira projects, mailboxes and web pages you allow, cites every claim,
and never changes anything outside Ysra without your approval.

![The Ask composer: "What do you want to know?", chat with Ysra, Files and Web source toggles, suggested questions such as "What changed across Jira and Slack this week?"](../assets/screens/ask.webp){ width="1600" height="960" }

## Ask a question

1. Switch the composer to **Ask**.
2. **Choose who answers** — the built-in *Ysra* or one of your
   [experts](experts.md).
3. **Choose the sources** it may use: files, the web, and any connected Slack,
   Jira or Gmail sources. It searches only what you select.
4. **Attach files or images** if the question is about them.
5. Pick **Answer** for a direct reply, or **Deep dive** for a research-style
   write-up with findings, evidence, open questions and next steps.
6. Send. Follow-up questions continue the same conversation.

Your question is saved the moment you send it. If the answer is interrupted —
you close the tab, the network drops — the conversation keeps your question and
lets you retry instead of losing it.

## Watching it work

While Ysra researches, the answer shows its **steps** as they happen — searching
company context, reading a file, fetching a web page, extracting a PDF. Steps
say what kind of work happened; they don't record your search terms or the
content they found.

Research is bounded: if Ysra runs out of research steps, it writes the best
answer it can from what it already found, rather than returning nothing.

## Answers you can check

Every factual claim carries a numbered **citation**. Open one to see the source,
the excerpt, and when it was read. The rules are strict:

- An answer may only cite sources it actually retrieved in this conversation.
  One that cites anything else is rejected, not shown.
- Web search results are only leads; a page must actually be read before it can
  be cited.
- Content inside your sources is treated as **data, never instructions**. A
  message that says "ignore your rules" is just a message.

A Deep dive doesn't loosen any of this — and it says so when the evidence is
thin.

<div class="phones" markdown>

![A Knowledge answer on mobile about "When does billing 2.0 ship?": cited claims, a table of blockers, a diagram, a generated PDF report, a proposed Slack message with Approve, and a Build this button](../assets/screens/mobile/ask.webp){ width="585" height="1266" }
/// caption
An answer with citations, a generated report, and a proposed action.
///

![The same answer in dark mode](../assets/screens/mobile/ask-dark.webp){ width="585" height="1266" }
/// caption
The same conversation in dark mode.
///

</div>

## What an answer can include

| Part | Description |
|---|---|
| **Text** | Markdown with inline citation pills. |
| **Sources panel** | Every source used, with provider, excerpt, link and time. |
| **Tables and diagrams** | Rendered in the conversation. |
| **Reports** | A designed PDF saved to your workspace files, when the expert may create reports. |
| **Proposed actions** | A Slack message or Jira change for you to approve. See [Actions and approvals](actions.md). |
| **Attachments** | The files and images you asked about, viewable inline. |

## Turning an answer into work

| From an answer you can… | What it produces | What you still choose |
|---|---|---|
| **Build this** | A Developer brief that uses the cited answer as evidence. | Repository and budget. |
| **Draft a worker** | An inactive [worker](../workers/index.md) draft with the answer's sources. | Schedule, grants and approvals, then activate. |
| **Approve an action** | The exact Slack or Jira change runs. | Nothing — you approved that exact content. |
| **Share** | A frozen, read-only link. See [Sharing](sharing.md). | Expiry; you can revoke it. |

## In this section

<div class="cards" markdown>

- [**Sources and citations**](sources.md)

    What Knowledge can read, how sources are chosen, and how citing works.

- [**Experts**](experts.md)

    Configured coworkers with a purpose, sources and allowed tools.

- [**Memory**](memory.md)

    Facts and preferences carried across conversations — visible and deletable.

- [**Actions and approvals**](actions.md)

    Slack and Jira changes that run only on your approval.

- [**Sharing**](sharing.md)

    Frozen, revocable links to a conversation.

</div>