Ask the catalog

At the end of this guide, you have an answer kept as a note, with links to what it drew on. You need a model backend with an Agent model. See attach a resource.

Ask a question

1. Type the question in the search bar at the top of the page, where it reads Search, ask, or paste an address. Press / to reach it from anywhere.
2. Wait for the results. Above them, a row reads Ask about followed by your question.
3. Choose that row. From the search bar, Tab or Down moves to it and Enter asks. Up or Escape goes back to the search bar.

xixo creates a note keyed by the question and opens its page. The question appears under The conversation, with progress while the answer is worked out. A question can be up to 500 characters.

xixo searches the catalog and reads the parts of what it finds that bear on the question: a sheet of a workbook, a section of a document, a minute of a recording, or what a picture shows. The agent model answers from them in one call. A total or a count over the rows of a table is worked out by xixo itself. A question about the world as it is now, such as the weather, goes to the web when the tenant has attached a web resource. See asking.

Once the answer is in, the Agent model that answered titles the note with what the answer found.

Ask about one item

1. Open the item’s page and choose Ask about this.
2. Type the question in the field that opens, and choose Ask.

The note is connected to the item, and the answer reads that item first. Follow-ups in the same note start from it too. Ask about this does not appear on a note that was itself asked, or on the page of a tag or a content type.

Read the answer

The conversation lists the newest question and its answer first, with earlier ones below it. The answer appears under its question. Each item it cites is a link to that item’s page, and a page it read on the web is a link to the page.

Below the answer, What it drew on lists every item the answer cited. The note is connected to each of them.

Follow up

1. On the note’s page, type in the field that reads Ask a follow-up, at the top of The conversation.
2. Choose Ask.

A follow-up is told the earlier questions and their answers, and reads first what they drew on. The field is disabled while an answer is still being worked out. A follow-up about an earlier answer itself, such as “say that as a table”, is answered by saying it again that way.

Ask again

Open the menu beside the note’s title and choose Ask again. xixo asks the latest question in the conversation again and adds the new answer at the top.

Keep what the answer found

The note itself lasts forever. What the agent made or kept while looking a question up on the web, such as a note it created or a page it snapshotted, lasts 30 days.

1. Open the item from What it drew on. Its page shows forgotten followed by the date.
2. Choose Keep forever.

To tag what the answer drew on, see tag items.

To remove the note and its conversation, choose Forget from the menu beside the note’s title, then Forget it. See lifetime.

Over GraphQL

askCatalog takes a question and returns the note as feed and the analysis that answers it as analysis. It needs xixo:catalog:write.

mutation {
  askCatalog(input: { question: "When does the lease renew?" }) {
    feed { id }
    analysis { id status }
  }
}

Watch the analysis with the analysisProgressed subscription, or query it until status is no longer queued or running. When it is done, said holds the answer and drewOn holds what it drew on.

To follow up, pass the note’s id as feedId with the next question. To ask about one item, pass its id as aboutId. To ask the latest question again, call analyzeFeed with the note’s id. To keep an item for good, call setFeedLifetime with its id and no lasts. See the GraphQL reference.

If it doesn’t work

• No Ask about row. The search bar treats text that looks like an address as something to keep, and offers that instead. Ask about also does not appear on an address page.
• no inference resource serves the agent role appears in place of an answer. No model backend names an Agent model. Add one with Change in the ⋯ menu on the backend’s card in Resources.
• ... is still being answered. A question can be followed up or asked again only after the previous answer finishes.
• The answer names nothing from the web. The tenant has no Web search, Fetch a page, or The web resource, so the question was asked of the catalog alone.
• An error about XIXO_INFERENCE_ORIGINS appears in place of an answer. The model backend’s origin is not permitted. See attach a resource.