Choosing what Deep Research reads
The perimeter is the set of files a research run is allowed to read. Choosing it well is most of the work: too narrow and it misses things, too wide and it spends time and credits on documents that were never relevant.
Good afternoon
Tip: mention a meeting with @ to draft its follow-up
Add to chat once everything is green
- Tick the files or folders to research
- A hollow dot means it is not indexed yet
- Index it here, no need to leave
- Add to chat once everything is green
Picking files and folders
Open Deep Research from the plus menu
The file picker opens.Tick files, or whole folders
A folder brings everything inside it.Press Add to chat
The blue pill appears in the composer.
The indexing dots
Every file carries a dot telling you whether Deep Research can see inside it yet. Hover any dot for the same explanation in words.
- Green: indexed. Deep Research and Ask can search inside it.
- Blue: being read right now.
- Grey: waiting its turn.
- Hollow: not indexed, so it will not appear in results.
- Red: could not be indexed. It stays in your files, but cannot be searched.
A part-filled dot on a folder means some of its files are ready and some are not.
Indexing files that are not ready
The picker has Upload & index for new files and Index all here for a folder. Individual rows offer Index now, or Retry index if a previous attempt failed. See adding and indexing files.
Upload & index also takes a .zip. It is unpacked into a folder named after the archive, with the folders inside it kept exactly as they were, and everything readable starts indexing. Files a research run cannot read, like videos or program files, are still saved to your files but left out of the selection so they cannot hold up Add to chat.
The progress step
After choosing, you see a progress screen that groups your selection into complete, in progress, waiting and failed. Add to chat only enables once everything you selected is ready. This is deliberate: a run that silently skipped half your files would be worse than waiting.
You do not have to sit and watch it. Indexing carries on if you close the dialog, leave the page or shut the tab. You can follow it any time from your files, where you can see what is being read, what is still to come, retry anything that failed, and pause or cancel the whole run. Files that finish are usable straight away, even while the rest are still going.
If you run out of credits part-way, indexing pauses rather than failing. We will email you, nothing already done is repeated, and it picks up where it stopped once you resume.
Turning it off
Tap the blue Deep Research pill in the composer. That clears the whole perimeter.