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the fundamentals · step 4 of 5

ask it anything

how your ai finds what you need in your memory, how to ask so it finds the right thing, and what it means when it finds nothing.

/community/guides/starter-ask-it-anything
4 of 5
step 1 of 53 minmeet innernetwhat innernet is, the three parts it is made of, and what you will have done by the end of this walk.
step 2 of 53 mincreate your nettisign up, hold the cell, name the creature that will keep your memory, and walk through the door.
step 3 of 53 minyour first memorymake a memory from a conversation, open it, read and edit its pages, and meet the folders netti keeps inside it.
step 4 of 52 minask it anythinghow your ai finds what you need in your memory, how to ask so it finds the right thing, and what it means when it finds nothing.
step 5 of 51 mincapture without tryinghow memory gathers on its own — from your commits, from your conversations, and from one word in a terminal — and how netti folds it in.

a memory is only useful if the right piece of it shows up at the right moment. you don't have to open anything or copy anything. you just ask.

ask in your own words

in any connected ai, ask the way you'd ask a colleague who was there:

ask plainly. the ai asks innernet, and answers from what it gets back.
ask plainly. the ai asks innernet, and answers from what it gets back.

the ai hands your question, word for word, to innernet. innernet doesn't send back your whole memory. it sends the few passages that answer it, a handful of things that were close, and a list of every page so nothing is out of reach. then the ai answers from that.

this is why it stays fast and cheap however big your memory grows: a memory with a thousand pages answers in the same small package as one with ten.

ask well

  • ask the whole question, not a keyword. what did we decide about the hotel, and why? finds more than hotel.
  • name the project when you have several: in lisbon-app, how do deposits work?
  • ask about the past on purpose. what did we use before stripe? makes innernet include the history lines it normally leaves out.
  • ask what it knows about you. what do you know about how i like to work? reads your shareable facts. private ones never come.

when it finds nothing

sometimes the honest answer is your memory has nothing on this. innernet says so plainly, and a good ai passes that on instead of guessing. that's a feature: it means everything else it tells you really came from your memory.

if you think it should have known, save it now: remember that the refund policy is 14 days. it's there for the next question.

things you said a minute ago

a new thing reaches innernet in a moment, but netti folds it into the pages a little later. until then it waits in the project's inbox folder, and it's already included when you ask. you never have to wait for netti to be able to ask.

where it shows

if your ai can show apps inside the chat, a small innernet line appears under its answers, saying what it just found or kept.

what innernet found, in one line under the answer, and the facts it held back. tap it to see exactly what was read and what was held back. that's the chat window, [step 11](/community/guides/starter-the-chat-window).
what innernet found, in one line under the answer, and the facts it held back. tap it to see exactly what was read and what was held back. that's the chat window, [step 11](/community/guides/starter-the-chat-window).

pick up where you left off

one question is worth making a habit of, at the start of any session:

the next morning, in a different tool.
the next morning, in a different tool.

when a session ends, a good ai leaves a handoff: what got done, what's next. the next session, in any tool, reads it first. you'll find them in the project's handoffs folder.

the technical side, including exactly what comes back for each question, is retrieval in the docs.

next: branch a memory.

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