Knowledge
Knowledge is the material a workspace supplies so that Connect's answers are grounded in something the business actually said: product pages, policies, price sheets, service descriptions, past answers worth reusing. It is the difference between a reply built from your material and a reply built from a model's general impression of your industry.
What a source is#
A knowledge source is something you added on purpose. It has an origin, it can be opened and read, and it can be removed — after which answers stop drawing on it. The knowledge bank holds the sources; the facts screen holds the individual statements pulled out of them, and the two are administered separately because they fail differently: a stale source is a document nobody updated, a wrong fact is one sentence that needs correcting.
Adding a source is not the same as attaching a file to a conversation. Files are documents in the workspace, read when a piece of work refers to them; knowledge is standing material considered whenever a question resembles it.
Grounding, and its budget#
Grounding means the answer is assembled from retrieved material rather than recalled. Two consequences follow, and both surprise people.
- Retrieval is bounded. Only a limited slice of knowledge reaches any one piece of work — on a live call the budget is a couple of thousand characters and a handful of facts, because prompt length delays the first spoken word. Adding a tenth document does not make the answer richer; it makes the selection harder.
- Absence is an answer. When the material does not cover a question, saying so is correct behaviour rather than a failure. Why uncertainty is a valid answer and why a sales agent should refuse to answer both turn on that.
Connect grounds without claiming a vector database, and the note on that is worth reading before assuming an architecture the product does not have.
Knowledge, memory, facts and files#
| Store | Where it comes from | What it is for | Removing it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | You supply it | Grounding an answer in the business's own material | Answers stop drawing on it |
| Memory | Learned or noted | Knowing this business and these people | Future behaviour changes; past records stand |
| Fact | Extracted from knowledge or a conversation | One checkable statement with provenance | That statement is no longer asserted |
| Files | Uploaded, dropped or pasted | Documents to work on or refer to | The document goes; versions and provenance are recorded |
The costly confusion is knowledge against memory. *Our returns window is fourteen days* belongs in knowledge, because it is the business's own statement and a customer may be quoted it. *This customer returns roughly a third of what they buy* belongs in memory, because it is an observation about a relationship and should never be quoted back. Filing the second as knowledge risks Connect repeating it to the person it describes.
Questions#
Does adding more knowledge make answers better?
Up to a point, then it competes with itself. Retrieval has a budget, so ten overlapping documents mean the wrong one can be selected. Fewer, current, non-contradictory sources outperform more.
What happens when knowledge and a conversation disagree?
The specific situation in front of Connect wins for that piece of work, and the disagreement is worth resolving at the source — a knowledge entry that contradicts what your team actually says will keep producing wrong replies.
Is knowledge shared between workspaces?
No. It is scoped to one workspace like every other record, and nothing you add is visible to another business.