Knowledge bases: retrieve your files in chat
A knowledge base is a collection of your files that Octop can search during chat. Instead of pasting a whole document into the conversation, the agent pulls the relevant passages and lists the source files under the reply. Click a citation to open that document.
Open it from the sidebar under Settings:
The page is marked BETA. An administrator turns the feature on for the instance. After that, you can create knowledge bases and use them in chat.
Turn the feature on
If you are an administrator, open Knowledge Bases, then Knowledge base settings.
Enable knowledge bases
Turn on Enable knowledge bases. This switch applies to everyone on the instance.
Choose how documents are indexed
Pick Local ONNX to index files on this machine, or Online embedding to use an embedding model from a provider you already set up under Management → Models.
Download a local model if needed
For Local ONNX, download a model, then save. For Chinese documents, start with a recommended model such as BAAI/bge-small-zh-v1.5. Changing the embedding model or OCR settings rebuilds every knowledge index.
Optional OCR
Turn on Image and scanned-document OCR if you need images or scanned PDFs. Choose Local ONNX (RapidOCR; components and default Chinese/English models install when you save) or Online vision model (images and rendered scan pages go to the provider you pick).
Until an administrator enables the feature and the model is ready, other users see a prompt to contact an administrator.
Create and fill a knowledge base
Create a knowledge base
Click Create knowledge base, give it a name, and optionally a description and icon. Set Document limit if this base needs more or fewer than the default 100 documents. Use 0 for no per-base limit. Turn on Shared so other people on this instance can read it. Turn on Default enabled so your new chats include it automatically — other people still select a shared base themselves.
Add documents
Click Upload documents or drag files onto the page. Supported text includes md / txt / rst / html / json / yaml, spreadsheets csv / tsv / xls / xlsx / xlsm, plus pdf / docx / pptx. With OCR on, you can also upload png / jpg / webp and scanned PDFs. You can click New file to write markdown or text, or New folder to organize files.
Wait until status is Ready
Octop indexes each file and shows upload progress. Status moves from Pending or Indexing to Ready. Saving an in-page edit starts indexing again.
Use it in chat
In the composer, open Knowledge bases and select the bases for this turn. When the agent used a document, sources appear under the reply. Click a source to preview it in the original layout, or download the original file.
Sharing and limits
- Only the owner (or an administrator) can edit a knowledge base.
- Shared bases are readable by everyone signed in on this instance.
- You can create up to 20 knowledge bases. Each base has its own document limit: the default is 100, the maximum is 10000, and
0means unlimited. - Each upload follows the server file-size cap (default 100 MB).