static/howto.md

Welcome to File Chat, a wrapper around OpenAI file search. This tool allows you to search, summarize, and translate your documents.

Start by uploading one or more documents to the tool. You can do so by clicking the button marked, "Select and upload your files". Documents should be one of the types supported by OpenAI; a list can be found here. Once uploaded, the document names will appear in the text box beneath the upload button. From there you can begin chatting with your data. The column on the right provides an interface to do so. Type a question into the small box at the bottom of the column and press "enter." Your message and its response will be displayed in the larger box above it.

You can add documents at any time during your interaction. To remove documents, reload the website and begin a new session; uploading new documents, or a subset of the previous ones. The following best-practices are advisable:

• Do not upload documents that contain information you want to keep secret, or are uncomfortable exposing to OpenAI.
• Responses will be based on all of the documents you upload. Make sure the current documents you have uploaded pertain to the questions you will be asking. Extraneous documents may reduce the focus -- and potentially the accuracy -- of the model's responses.
• Having some idea of what is in your document set is a good idea. That will allow you to judge whether the model is making things up; and if so, to what extent.
• If the answer to a question is important, ask the question in a few different ways. The model's ability to answer similar questions consistently is some evidence that it is doing the right thing.

This project is open source. To view the code, or to run your own instance, please see the Github repository. It is also a work in progress: please be patient if the tool is slow or throws up errors, and use the answers at your own risk.