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The Knowledge base holds what your agents know: your business information, organized so the AI can consult it when responding. Open it from the Control center’s knowledge card, create a knowledge base with Create knowledge base, and fill it with your content: files, free text, or websites. For a website, Ciarem finds the pages of the site, lets you pick which ones to index, and checks them for changes every week. See Website sources. The agent answers from what you have given it. If a customer asks something outside its knowledge, transfer rules catch it rather than letting the agent invent an answer. The most common cause of wrong answers is a price or policy that changed in real life but not in the knowledge base, so keep it current. The Knowledge bases page with one knowledge base per agent

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How the agent reads it

Most knowledge-base problems come from expecting the agent to read a document the way a person would. It does not:
1

Your content is cut into fragments

Every file, free text, and web page is split into fragments of a few paragraphs each, cut at paragraph breaks. The source card shows how many it produced (Fragments: 12). A source that failed with No readable text was found produced none.
2

Each customer message is matched against the fragments

When a customer writes, the agent searches the fragments by meaning and by keywords, and reads only the handful that best match that message, never the whole document. A sentence that does not resemble anything a customer would ask is, in practice, never read.
3

What it finds is information, not orders

The agent uses the fragments as facts about your business and writes its own reply in your voice. It never quotes or names the document, and it is not looking for orders in it. What it finds shapes the answer, not how the agent behaves.
This is why instructions in the knowledge base do nothing. “Always ask for the customer’s phone number before quoting” is only found when someone writes about phone numbers, and even then it is read as a fact, not followed as a rule. Behavior lives in Basic configuration, each agent’s own settings, and transfer rules. The knowledge base is for what the agent needs to know, not what it should do. The reverse is also true: a transfer rule or a tone setting cannot teach the agent a price or a policy. Every assistant that answers from documents keeps knowledge (reference material) apart from instructions (rules, tone, workflow).

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What goes where

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Common mistakes

Every one of these comes from real knowledge bases. Open each for the fix.

Instructions instead of information

The most common one by far. The document reads like a briefing for the agent (“always”, “never”, “you must”) and none of it happens, because the agent only sees a fragment when a customer’s message resembles it, and reads it as a fact when it does.A quick test: if a sentence starts with “the agent”, “you should”, “always”, or “never”, it is a setting, not knowledge.
“Our basic plan costs $49” works until the price changes and the old sentence survives in three documents. Prices, plans, stock, and anything the agent should look up exactly belong in a catalog, where each record has its own fields and the agent reads them as they are. Keep the knowledge base for what surrounds the price: what is included, how billing works, whether taxes apply.
An old PDF says 24 hours’ notice to cancel; the website says 48. The agent may read either fragment, so customers get different answers on different days. When something changes, update or delete the old source. Do not add a new one on top of it.
“The leading clinic in the city, with world-class service and a passion for smiles” gives the agent nothing to answer with. Neither does an FAQ entry that just says “Yes.” The agent cannot fill in what you left out. Customers ask concrete things: how long, how much, what do I bring, what happens if. Write the answer you would give on the phone.
“20% off this week”, “closed tomorrow for the holiday”, “see the table above”: the agent reads that fragment months later, on its own, with no idea what “this week” or “above” referred to. Use dates, and make every paragraph stand on its own.
Websites are full of “get in touch for pricing” and “ask our team about availability”. Indexed as they are, they teach the agent to send the customer somewhere else, often to you, in the same chat. Replace each one with the actual answer, or with a step the agent can take (a transfer, a link, a booking). The same goes for text that only points to another page (“see our FAQ page”): the agent reads the sentence, not the page it points to.
Staff procedures, supplier costs, margins, notes about specific customers, passwords, the “what to say when a customer is angry” script: anything in the base can be found and repeated. The knowledge base is a customer-facing document. Keep internal material out of it entirely.
Uploads are PDF and TXT, up to 20 MB each, and the PDF must contain real text. Word and Excel files are not accepted; paste their text as a Free text source. A scanned document, a photo of a price list, a menu exported as an image, or slides full of screenshots fail with No readable text was found. Tables and multi-column layouts often come through as a jumble, too. When in doubt, paste the text as a Free text source and check the fragment count.
A 60-page “everything about us” PDF is not read cover to cover. It becomes hundreds of fragments, and a fragment that mixes hours, refunds, and parking is a weaker match for any single question than a fragment about one thing. Split content by topic, give each section a clear heading, and start each paragraph with the subject it answers. The same applies to websites: index the pages that answer customer questions, not the blog archive or the careers page. See Website sources.
Internal codes, abbreviations, and assumed context: “PX-200 avail. per SOP, see SKU list” means nothing to the agent or to the customer. Write it the way a customer would ask about it, and the way you would answer them.

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What good content looks like

One topic per source

A source named for what it answers (Cancellations and refunds), a few paragraphs long, with a heading per sub-topic. Easy to find, easy to replace when it changes.

The answer in the first sentence

Write it the way you would say it on the phone: “Yes, we deliver in Bogotá and Chía.” Then the conditions.

Conditions and exceptions spelled out

Who it applies to, when, and what happens otherwise: “Free up to 48 hours before; after that, the full price is charged.”

Numbers and dates, not adjectives

“Fast delivery” and “this week” mean nothing months later. “Same day for orders before 2 p.m.”; “valid until 15 August 2026.”

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Before and after

One free-text source for a dental clinic, as it is often written and as it should be:
Agent instructions: always be polite and ask for the patient’s name first. Never give medical advice. We are the best clinic in the city with top-notch technology. Cleaning $50, whitening $200 (this month $150!). For other prices, contact us. Cancel with 24h notice (new policy: 48h). If the patient is upset, transfer to Dr. López.

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Check that it works

Every source shows a fragment count above zero and no error. A failed source means nothing usable was extracted: fix the file, or paste its text as free text.
Then use the chat on the knowledge base’s own page. Ask five questions the way your customers actually write them (“how much is a cleaning?”, “do you take walk-ins?”) and look at the cited sources under each answer. If the wrong source answers, or none does, the fix is in the text (a clearer heading, a sentence that matches how people ask), not in the agent.
When a real customer gets a wrong answer, the Evaluation center groups the replies that need fixing by theme. A missing or outdated fact is a knowledge-base fix; a wrong behavior is a configuration fix.

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Which agents can read it

Each agent picks the knowledge bases it may consult: the Knowledge switches in its configuration, one per knowledge base. See Your AI agent team.