Tips for Getting Better Answers from Your Documents

Elephas works best when your question sounds like your documents and points at the right files. Name what you want, use the words your files use, and narrow the scope when you know where the answer is. The patterns below work on contracts, research papers, meeting notes, reports and spreadsheets alike.

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Before you start

• Know how to ask a question and how to narrow it to specific documents.
• Some patterns read whole documents. They take longer and work best with Elephas AI or your own API key. See How it works.

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Question patterns

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Find a fact

Ask directly, in your document’s own terms.

• “What is the notice period in the lease?”
• “Who is the data protection contact in the supplier agreement?”

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Point at a place

If you know where the answer is, say so. Elephas recognizes pages, page ranges, lines, section names and Bates numbers, and reads that exact place.

• “What does page 4 of the lease say?”
• “Summarize pages 10 to 14 of the annual report.”
• “What’s under ‘Payment terms’ in the services agreement?”
• “What does the Termination section say?”
• “Show me Bates ABC000123.”

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Look up an exact number or code

Invoice numbers, case numbers, part numbers and other codes are searched for exactly, not by meaning.

• “Which documents mention INV-20431?”
• “What do the notes say about case 2024-CV-118?”

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Find every mention

Ask for “all” or “every” to get an exhaustive search. Elephas tells you how much it covered, and which pages it couldn’t read.

• “Find every reference to the indemnity cap.”
• “List all the places where Dr. Patel is mentioned.”

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Summarize or outline

Ask for a summary, an outline or the gist. Elephas reads the whole document or section rather than a few passages.

• “Summarize this report in five bullet points.”
• “Give me an outline of the thesis, chapter by chapter.”
• “Walk me through the onboarding handbook.”

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Compare

Name both sides. Narrowing the scope to the two files helps.

• “Compare the termination clauses in the 2023 and 2024 contracts.”
• “How do the two vendor proposals differ on price and support hours?”

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Extract into a list or table

Say what columns you want.

• “List every payment date and amount in the lease as a table.”
• “Extract all action items from the meeting notes, with the owner of each.”

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Build a timeline

• “Build a timeline of the project from the meeting notes, with dates.”
• “What happened, in order, between the first complaint and the settlement?”

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Steps for a better answer

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How it works

• Some questions read whole documents. Summaries, outlines, “find every” and “walk me through” questions make Elephas read far more of your documents. While it works, Ask may say This question reads whole sources, so it may use noticeably more of your AI allowance than usual. With your own API key, your provider bills that extra reading. See AI usage and credits.
• Local AI answers in one pass. With Local AI, the model on your computer answers from the passages Elephas found, without reading further on its own. It suits focused questions over a few documents. Keep the scope small. If the local model can’t take everything, Ask says Too much context for the local model. Try a shorter question or fewer Brains. See Choose how Elephas answers.
• Elephas answers from your documents, not general knowledge. A question your files don’t cover gets an honest “not found”. See Why Elephas says an answer isn’t in your documents.

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Troubleshooting

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