How to Ask Questions About Your Notes
Ask in natural language and ground answers in your library.
Introduction
Searching by keyword fails when you remember the idea but not the wording. Ask AI is for questions like “What did I save about onboarding drop-off?” using your notes as the source of truth.
What you'll learn
- How Ask AI retrieves notes locally first
- What changes when you add your own API key
- How to ask questions that stay grounded
Retrieval before generation
MemoBraid ranks notes locally against your question. Even without a key, you can see which notes match — useful on its own.
With a BYOK key, the assistant can synthesize an answer and point at sources from that retrieved set. It should not pretend to know things you never captured.
How to ask well
Prefer concrete prompts: topics, project names, timeframes. Vague prompts return vague retrieval. If nothing relevant was saved, the honest outcome is “no matching notes,” not a hallucinated essay.
Privacy note
Local ranking stays on-device. If you enable cloud synthesis, the prompt and selected note context go to your configured provider. Your library is not uploaded to MemoBraid’s servers as a hosted brain.
Ask a grounded question
- Capture a few notes on a topic you care about.
- Open Ask AI at `/app/assistant` (or from marketing CTAs that deep-link there).
- Ask a specific question.
- Review matched sources; add a key in Settings → AI only if you want synthesized answers.
Ask your library
Natural-language questions over notes you actually saved.
FAQ
Can Ask AI browse the public web for me?
It is designed to work over your saved notes, not as a general web search replacement.
Why are answers empty?
Usually no notes matched, or no key is set for synthesis. Check retrieval hits first.
Is Ask AI in the main sidebar?
Not currently, but the assistant page is implemented at `/app/assistant`.