Knowledge base

Knowledge collections organize the documents your agents can search and read. Open Manage > Knowledge to manage the library, then open an agent's Knowledge tab to choose which collections, labels or documents it can use.

Find your way around the library

The library home shows your collections, Needs attention, Recently changed documents and labels. Open a collection to work with its documents, or use Search all knowledge to search across the library.

The workspace has collections and labels on the left, a document list in the middle and an inspector for the selected document. Search matches titles, paths, summaries and content. Use filters to narrow the list, select rows for bulk changes, or open a document to edit it. The library is an administrative view; seeing a document here does not mean a particular agent can use it.

Needs attention groups documents that need review, have a sync problem or lack a summary, as well as failed imports. Open a group to handle its documents or retry failed work. A review queue lets you move through documents without rebuilding your selection.

Collections

Every document belongs to one collection. Its kind determines how you add and maintain content.

Kind	What it holds	Main actions
Manual (MANUAL)	Documents written in Studio	New document
Web pages (URL)	Documents imported from URLs	Add web pages, Sync all
Uploaded files (UPLOAD)	Markdown and text files from files, folders or ZIP archives	Upload files, then Upload new version
Zendesk (ZENDESK)	Articles imported from a help center	Re-import, when its source is available

Click New collection on the library home, enter a Name and choose a Kind. Zendesk collections are created by an import. A new collection grants no agent access until you assign it.

Open the collection menu and choose Rename. Renaming keeps its documents and agent assignments. On a Manual or Web pages collection, Use for new documents makes it the default destination for that kind. An explicitly chosen destination takes precedence. If no default exists when one is needed, Stellar creates General for manual documents or Web pages for URL documents. Uploaded files always have an explicit destination; Zendesk imports return to their help center's collection.

Delete collection deletes its documents too. The confirmation shows affected agents, including published versions, which lose access immediately. First choose another default before deleting a default collection. Zendesk collections cannot be deleted; delete individual articles instead, which a later import can bring back. Collection deletion supports up to 1,000 documents at once; reduce a larger collection first.

Add and manage knowledge documents

Click Add knowledge to upload files, Add web pages or Import from Zendesk. To write a document, use New document in a Manual collection. Give it a title and content, optionally add a summary and labels, then save.

For files, choose an Uploaded files collection or create one. Drop a ZIP or files, or choose a folder. Review the detected titles, labels and changes before applying the upload. See Upload knowledge files for front matter, limits and replacement behavior.

Labels describe topics across your library. A label does not grant access by itself: add the label from its collection on the agent's Knowledge tab. Adding a label to a document can therefore change which agents can use it.

Sync content from a URL

In Add knowledge, choose Add web pages, select a Web pages collection and enter URLs, one per line. You can add up to 50 HTTP or HTTPS URLs per batch, choose Labels for these pages, and turn on Enable weekly auto-sync. Import results show which pages succeeded and which need another attempt.

Use Sync all to queue every page in the collection, including pages with weekly auto-sync off. Pages already syncing are skipped. To sync one page, select it in the inspector or open its editor Properties and click Queue sync. Pages are processed in batches; busy queues can take longer. Agents keep the current content until each page is processed. These panels also show the last sync time and let you change Weekly auto-sync, which controls the weekly schedule only.

A page with an update waiting for review keeps serving its saved content until you apply the update. Open Review update, inspect the proposed changes, choose Accept all, Reject all or individual changes, then click Apply selection. Leaving the review without applying does not change the document. The sync panel also gives you its status and History.

Import from Zendesk

Choose Import from Zendesk in Add knowledge, select your Zendesk Integration and Environment, and continue to choose languages. Under What to import, use Everything or Select categories, sections or articles. You need a configured integration, including for a public help center.

The import takes published articles in the selected languages. Categories and sections become labels, such as Billing: Refunds. One import supports up to 2,000 articles across all selected languages; narrow the selection if it exceeds that limit. The same article in two languages counts twice.

Zendesk controls each article's title, content and labels. You can edit its summary in Stellar. Re-import uses the collection's remembered source settings. When an article's title or body changes, re-import regenerates its summary, replacing any summary you edited in Stellar. Deleting an individual article in Stellar does not remove it from Zendesk, so it can return on a later import.

Articles deleted or unpublished in Zendesk are not removed from Stellar: a re-import cannot distinguish a removed article from one missed by a partial fetch, so it never deletes documents. Delete those documents in Stellar yourself.

Edit documents and summaries

Open a document from the workspace to edit its title, body, summary and labels. The editor uses rich text for Markdown it can preserve. If loading the body into rich text would rewrite it, the editor shows the rendered document and explains the affected formatting. Choose Edit Markdown source to edit and save the original Markdown directly. Saving only metadata preserves an untouched body exactly as stored. Zendesk article bodies remain read-only.

A document created without a summary receives one automatic summary. It describes the content so an agent can decide whether to open the document. If you write a summary before generation finishes, your text is kept. Later content edits do not automatically replace the summary.

Click Generate beside the summary to produce a suggestion from the current title and body, including unsaved edits. Review the suggestion and save the document to keep it. If you change the body while generation is running, generate again from the updated content. You can always write the summary yourself.

Bulk actions

Select documents in the workspace to open the bulk bar. Check the selected count, including any selected documents outside the visible results, before applying a change.

Action	Behavior
Labels	Add or remove labels across the selection, or replace all labels. Source-managed labels are ineligible.
Move	Move Manual documents to another Manual collection, or URL documents to another Web pages collection. Uploaded files and Zendesk articles cannot move.
Generate summaries	Generate missing keeps existing summaries. Replace existing summaries replaces them, including summaries people wrote, and fills missing ones. Select at most 1,000 documents.
Delete	Permanently remove the selected documents. Zendesk articles are excluded by default; use Include Zendesk articles if intended.

Label changes, moves and deletions show their effect on agent access before confirmation. Mixed selections show ineligible documents; confirm the eligible subset explicitly. Results distinguish changed, unchanged, unavailable and ineligible documents. Bulk selection supports up to 10,000 documents; narrow larger selections.

Add documents to an agent

Open the agent's Knowledge tab and click Add documents in the Documents card. Choose a collection, then add the whole collection, one of its labels, or individual documents. A collection includes its current and future documents. A label includes documents with that label in the selected collection, including documents labeled later. A label in a different collection grants nothing. Individual documents stay selected until you remove them.

Each row has a Placement and a When control:

• Searchable lets the agent find the document and open its full text when needed.
• Summary in prompt adds the document's title and summary when the selected state starts. The agent can open the full text if it needs more detail.
• Full text in prompt places the document's full text in the prompt, either from the first turn or when the selected state starts.

Use Always to place full text in the prompt from the first turn, or from the start of the email for email agents. Choose one or more states to add a summary or full text when those states start. The agent can both search a document and place it in the prompt; the table shows overlap so you can see both uses.

The Advanced section contains Excluded documents, which removes a document everywhere even if a collection or label includes it, and Search limits per state. Adding the first document enables knowledge for the agent. Removing the last placement disables knowledge retrieval.

The same document choices apply to email agents. API clients must use the collection-based knowledgeAccess format; the former flat shape is no longer accepted.

State knowledge in the dialogue editor

Open a state in the Dialogue builder. Its Knowledge in [state name] panel controls what appears when the state starts and what it can search. Under Searchable while in this state, choose Everything, Only some, or None. Only some narrows search to selected collections, labels or documents within the agent's access.

For voice and chat agents, per-state search choices require strict state separation. Without it, all states share the agent's search scope. Email agents always apply state search choices.

Summary in prompt and Full text in prompt are separate from search. You can add documents to a state without making them searchable there. A summary gives the agent the title and summary when the state starts; full text makes the body available immediately. A state never grants access outside the agent's selected collections, labels and documents, or bypasses an exclusion.

A running conversation may also reopen documents returned by an earlier search or state placement. This permission survives a label change while the document remains in the agent's access and is not excluded. It carries across a state transition only between states that inherit the agent's search scope; a state with its own search limit keeps its own grants. Use the agent's selected documents and exclusions for access boundaries, rather than relying on a state search limit to revoke earlier knowledge.

How the agent searches and uses knowledge

Enabling knowledge gives the agent search_knowledge and get_knowledge_document. Search returns document metadata; the second tool reads a selected document's body. If a document is already listed in the current context, the agent can open it directly.

Search ranks lexical matches in the title, summary, upload path and indexed content. Titles, summaries and paths also support approximate word matching. Results with equal relevance are ordered newest first. This is not semantic search: synonyms and different languages may need different keywords. Without a query, results are listed newest first. Search defaults to 50 results and allows at most 100, so a full list is not the whole library.

Content search covers the first 200,000 characters of each document. A longer document can still be saved and opened, but a term appearing only after that boundary cannot match through its body. Split long reference material into focused documents when you need every section to be discoverable. Email agents read only the first 40,000 characters of a document, so split longer sources for email even when they are fully indexed.

Try a question

Use Try a question on the Knowledge tab. Choose Configuration, enter a Question, then click Run to test the agent-wide scope. You can compare current unsaved edits, the saved draft and the published configuration. The channel is selected automatically for the agent. Test state settings from that state's knowledge panel; its test uses the state and its unsaved changes.

The results show search order, summaries, prompt placements and why each document is available. Show excluded or out-of-scope matches helps an authorized editor diagnose missing results; these comparison matches are not given to the agent. The test checks retrieval, not the agent's answer. Test the full conversation in the Playground as well.

Prompt your agent to use knowledge

Put shared retrieval rules in the personality instructions and topic-specific directions in the relevant state. For example:

For questions about returns, search our knowledge before answering.
If the relevant document is already listed, open it directly.
Use words likely to appear in the policy. If the result is unhelpful,
try different keywords before concluding the answer is unavailable.
Read the selected document before answering and use only what it supports.
If the answer is missing or unclear, say so and offer a handover.
Answer in the customer's language, regardless of the document's language.

Use General knowledge for short context

General knowledge holds short, always-on facts for one agent, such as support hours. Use documents for longer shared reference material, state instructions for rules tied to one dialogue step, and actions for current account, order or availability data.

Next steps

• Prepare files with Upload knowledge files.
• Choose access and retrieval patterns with Knowledge management strategies.
• Configure Knowledge for email agents.