Brains

What is a brain?

A brain is the collection of information your AI assistant can search when answering questions. It can include documentation sources (websites that There There crawls), manually written articles, and MCP connections to external services.

Brains are linked to channels. When an agent uses the AI chat on a ticket, the assistant searches the brain linked to that ticket's channel. This means different channels can draw from different brains, which is useful if your workspace handles support for multiple products. A single brain can be shared across multiple channels.

To link a brain to a channel, go to the channel's settings and select a brain from the dropdown. You can also set this during the initial channel setup.

Documentation sources

Documentation sources are websites that There There crawls and indexes. By connecting your product documentation, help center, or API reference, the assistant can provide accurate, sourced answers to customer questions.

Adding a documentation source

1. Go to Settings > Brains and select the brain you want to configure (or create a new one).
2. Open the Sources tab and click to add a new source.
3. Provide a name for the source (e.g., "Product Documentation").
4. Enter the base URL of your documentation site (e.g., https://docs.example.com).
5. Optionally specify include paths to limit crawling to specific sections, or exclude paths to skip irrelevant pages.
6. Save the source to begin crawling.

How crawling works

After you add a source, There There automatically starts crawling the website. The crawl status progresses through several stages: Pending, Crawling, Completed, or Failed. You can monitor the progress in real time, including the number of pages crawled and chunks created.

The crawler converts each page into markdown, splits it into smaller chunks, and generates embeddings for semantic search. This allows the AI assistant to find relevant passages even when the customer's question does not use the exact same wording as the documentation.

Keeping docs up to date

Documentation sources can be re-crawled to pick up changes. If your product documentation is updated frequently, re-crawl periodically to ensure the AI assistant always has the latest information. If a crawl fails, check the error message for details. Common issues include unreachable URLs or pages that block crawlers.

Articles

Articles are pieces of knowledge you write directly inside There There. Use them for information that does not live on a public website, like internal procedures, troubleshooting steps, or policies your team needs the AI to know about.

Articles are edited in a rich text editor and are indexed the same way as crawled documentation. The AI assistant searches them alongside your documentation sources.

MCP connections

MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections let you extend the AI assistant with tools from external services. For example, connecting your error tracking service lets the assistant look up recent errors when a customer reports a bug. See MCP Connections for the full guide.

Additional instructions

Each brain has an optional instructions field where you can add context for the AI. For example, you might write "This brain covers our billing product. When users mention invoices or payments, search here first." These instructions help the AI understand which brain is relevant to a given question.