Co-write a long document
Build out a long document section by section with the assistant.
Intermediate · ~15 min · Prerequisites: comfortable with Ask assistant
What you'll do
Use the assistant panel inside a document to build a long piece of content progressively — starting with an outline, filling in each section, adding sources, and revising until it's right. This workflow is faster than asking for the entire document at once because you can correct the direction early and work section by section.
Start with an outline
Before writing any prose, ask the assistant to draft the structure:
"Create a section outline for a 2,000-word technical overview of our data pipeline. Include sections for architecture, components, failure modes, and SLAs."
The assistant inserts a skeleton of headings directly into the document. Read through it and remove or rename any sections that don't fit before moving on — it's much easier to reshape the outline now than after the body is written.
If the outline is wrong, click Undo agent edit and try a more specific prompt. Describing the audience ("for engineers who maintain the system") and the goal ("as an internal reference, not a pitch") usually sharpens the result.
Fill in sections
With the outline in place, work through it section by section. Anchor each request to the heading you want filled in:
"Write the 'Architecture' section. We use Kafka for streaming, Spark for transformation, and Snowflake for storage. Keep it under 300 words."
The assistant writes into that section and highlights the change. Respond with refinements before moving to the next section — "add a diagram placeholder after the third paragraph" or "cut the last two sentences".
You don't have to do this in order. If you know exactly what one section needs, jump to it and ask. The assistant reads the whole document before every edit, so it stays consistent with whatever you've already written.
Add sources
When the assistant mentions facts you want to back up, ask it to add citations:
"Add a citation for the 99.9% SLA claim."
Citations land as [[cite:N]] markers in the text, with a footnote block the assistant manages automatically. If you already have a source in mind, paste the URL in your message:
"Cite this URL for the Kafka throughput figure: https://..."
The assistant fetches the page, extracts the relevant claim, and inserts the citation. See Ask assistant for details on how citation tracking works.
Revise and undo
Once a draft section is written, ask the assistant to rewrite it with a tighter brief:
"Rewrite the 'Failure modes' section as a bullet list, one failure per bullet with the mitigation inline."
If the rewrite misses the mark, open the ▾ caret next to Undo agent edit and pick the previous version from the history menu. This lets you restore a specific state without losing the rest of the document.
When the document is done, close the assistant panel — the thread stays bound to the document and picks back up the next time you click Ask assistant.