Set up your knowledge base
Upload documents and start searching through them with AI-powered chat.
What you'll build
By the end of this guide, you'll have documents uploaded to your knowledge base and be able to search through them using natural language. Instead of digging through folders or skimming PDFs, you'll just ask a question and get an answer — with references back to the source.
Prerequisites
- You've completed the onboarding wizard and have an active workspace
- You have at least one document ready to upload (PDF, DOCX, TXT, or Markdown)
Steps
Go to Knowledge Base
Click Knowledge Base in the sidebar. This is where all your uploaded documents live. You'll see a clean interface with an upload area and, once you have documents, a chat panel for searching through them.
Upload your documents
Click Upload and select one or more files from your computer. Opisense supports common formats including PDF, DOCX, TXT, and Markdown. You can drag and drop files directly into the upload area too.
You can upload multiple files at once. Each document is processed independently, so you don't need to wait for one to finish before adding more.
Wait for processing
After uploading, Opisense's AI processes each document — extracting text, understanding the structure, and indexing everything for search. You'll see a progress indicator for each file. Most documents process in under a minute, though larger files may take a bit longer.
Don't close the page while processing is in progress. You'll get a notification when everything is ready, and the document status will update to "Processed."
Try a search
Once your documents are processed, head to the chat panel and ask a question in plain language. For example:
- "What's our refund policy?"
- "Summarize the key findings from the Q3 report"
- "What are the onboarding steps for new employees?"
The AI will search through your documents, pull out the relevant information, and give you a clear answer with references to the source material. You can click on any reference to jump straight to that section of the document.
Connect to your assistant
Your knowledge base becomes even more powerful when it's connected to your AI assistant or agents. Head to your assistant's settings and link the knowledge base as a source. Now, whenever you chat with your assistant, it can pull from your documents to give you better, more informed answers.
What's next?
Your knowledge base is live and searchable. Here are some ways to get more out of it:
- Upload more documents — The more context your AI has, the better the answers. Add team wikis, process docs, product specs, or anything your team references regularly
- Connect to agents — Link your knowledge base to AI agents so they can answer questions using your documents (see Build a custom agent)
- Explore the full feature set — Check out the Knowledge Base reference for advanced options like collections, access controls, and deep search