Knowledge Base
The knowledge base is the content your co-pilot draws from when answering questions. Connect your docs, upload files, or point it at your website — Pillar indexes everything and retrieves the right content at query time.
How It Works
Pillar uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to ground the co-pilot's answers in your actual content:
- You connect one or more content sources (website, files, cloud storage, or snippets)
- Pillar indexes the content and generates embeddings for search
- When a user asks a question, Pillar finds the most relevant sections
- The co-pilot builds its response from those sections instead of relying on general AI knowledge
Sources
| Source | Use Case | Sync Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Website | Docs sites, help centers, marketing pages | Periodic (daily) |
| Files | PDFs, Word docs, text files | Manual re-upload |
| Cloud Storage | Document libraries in S3 or GCS | Periodic (daily) |
| Snippets | Corrections, FAQs, AI instructions | Instant (edited in place) |
Mixing Source Types
Most setups use more than one source type:
- Website to index your public docs or help center automatically
- Files for internal guides, product manuals, or PDFs that aren't on the web
- Cloud Storage when you have a large document library managed in S3 or GCS
- Snippets to patch gaps, add FAQs, or give the co-pilot topic-specific instructions
You can add as many sources as you need. The co-pilot searches across all of them and pulls the best matches regardless of where the content lives.
Supported File Types
When uploading files or syncing from cloud storage, Pillar supports:
| Type | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Documents | .pdf, .docx, .doc, .md, .txt |
| Presentations | .pptx, .ppt |
| Spreadsheets | .xlsx, .xls, .csv |
| Web | .html, .htm |
| Other | .json, .epub |
Maximum file size: 100 MB
Next Steps
- Website — Crawl and index your public site
- Files — Upload documents directly
- Cloud Storage — Connect an S3 or GCS bucket
- Snippets — Add custom text content