Elephas

Creating Your First Brain

Learn how to set up your first workspace and add your documents, PDFs, and notes to start asking questions.

Watch: Create your first Super Brain

What is a Super Brain?

A Super Brain is your private knowledge workspace in Elephas. Think of it as a project folder that Elephas can search and reason over. You can create separate Super Brains for different topics: one for work documents, another for research papers, another for personal notes.

Create a new Super Brain

  1. Open Elephas and click New Brain in the sidebar
  2. Give your Super Brain a name (e.g., "Work Documents" or "Research")
  3. Optionally add a description to help you remember what this workspace is for
  4. Pick a model mode (under Compatibility & control): Offline Mode (fully local, one-click model download, requires Apple Silicon M1+) or All Models Mode (choose an indexing engine and a default chat model from the dropdown)
  5. Click Create

How indexing works: your files are processed locally; with the Elephas AI engine, embeddings are generated once at upload, or you can use offline models for 100% local privacy. A Super Brain is great for replying to emails, drafting posts, and answering questions from your own knowledge.

Add your files

Once your Super Brain is created, add your documents. Elephas supports PDFs, Word documents (.docx), text files, Markdown, EPUB, and more.

  1. Click Add Files in the Super Brain view
  2. Select your files from Finder, or drag and drop them directly into the window
  3. Elephas will index your files locally on your Mac. This may take a moment for large files

Supported file types

  • Documents: PDF, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, PPTX, Pages, TXT, MD, RTF, CSV, JSON, HTML, EPUB, EML
  • Images (with OCR): JPG, PNG, HEIC, GIF, WebP, TIFF
  • Audio & video (with transcription): MP3, MP4, MOV, WAV, M4A, AAC
  • Code files: Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Swift, Java, C/C++, Go, Ruby, PHP, and more
  • Web: URLs (Elephas fetches and indexes the page content), YouTube transcripts
  • Integrations: Apple Notes, Notion, Obsidian, DEVONthink, and other tools (see Integrations section)

For the complete list of supported formats, see Adding Files to Your Workspace.

Ask your first question

After indexing completes, type a question in the chat area. Elephas searches your documents and provides an answer grounded in your sources, with citations pointing to the relevant files and passages.

Related articles

Working with Your KnowledgeAdding Files to Your WorkspaceAdd PDFs, Word documents, web pages, voice memos, and entire websites to your Super Brain workspace.Working with Your KnowledgeSearching Your KnowledgeAsk questions and get answers grounded in your sources with citations. Use semantic search to find what you need.Privacy & Data ProtectionHow Your Data Is StoredYour documents are indexed and stored entirely on your Mac. Learn exactly how Elephas keeps your data private and where it lives.