Knowledge Base Guide

Your sidekick is only as smart as the information you give it. This guide covers best practices for building a knowledge base that delivers accurate, relevant answers.

How the Knowledge Base Works

When you upload a document, Sidekick Forge processes it through a pipeline called RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Here's what happens behind the scenes:

Chunking

Your document is split into small, meaningful pieces called "chunks." Each chunk typically contains a paragraph or section of content.

Embedding

Each chunk is converted into a mathematical representation (a "vector") that captures its meaning. This allows the system to find content by meaning, not just keywords.

Retrieval

When a user asks a question, the system finds the most relevant chunks and passes them to your sidekick as context. Your sidekick then uses this context to craft an accurate answer.

Knowledge Base — Document Upload

What to Upload

Supported Formats

PDF — Product guides, reports, manuals, whitepapers
Text files (.txt) — Plain text content, FAQs, scripts
Markdown (.md) — Structured documentation, help articles
Web URLs — Paste a link and the page will be automatically crawled and indexed
WordPress content — Automatically synced via the Sidekick Forge Connect plugin

Great content to upload

Product & Service Info

Product descriptions, pricing pages, feature lists, comparison sheets

Support Content

FAQs, help articles, troubleshooting guides, how-tos

Best Practices for Better Answers

Write clear, self-contained content

Each document should make sense on its own. Avoid content that relies heavily on other documents for context. Instead of a document titled "Updates" with notes like "Changed the policy from last week," write the complete updated policy in full.

Use descriptive headings

Clear headings help the chunking process create meaningful pieces. A heading like "Return Policy for Online Orders" produces better chunks than "Section 4.2".

Keep documents focused

A 5-page document about your return policy will produce better answers than a 200-page employee handbook that happens to mention returns on page 147. Focused documents lead to more relevant retrieval.

Update regularly

Remove outdated documents and replace them with current versions. If your sidekick is pulling from an old pricing page, it will give users incorrect information.

Avoid uploading: Scanned images without OCR text, spreadsheets with raw data and no context, internal memos with jargon that users won't use in questions, or duplicate versions of the same content.

Understanding Citations

When your sidekick uses knowledge base content to answer a question, it includes citations in the conversation UI. Citations let users verify the source of information and build trust in the answers.

Citations appear as clickable references below the sidekick's response. Each citation shows:

The document title (e.g., "product-guide.pdf")
The relevant text excerpt that was used
A link to the source (if the document was a URL)

Tip: Name your documents descriptively. A file called "Q4-2025-pricing-update.pdf" is much more helpful in a citation than "doc-final-v3.pdf".

Managing Documents

Uploading

Navigate to Knowledge Base in the admin panel. Drag and drop files into the upload area or click to browse. You can also paste a URL to index a web page. Documents are processed automatically — you'll see the status change from "Processing" to "Indexed" once complete.

Document Access

By default, uploaded documents are available to all your sidekicks. You can restrict a document to specific sidekicks from the Knowledge Base page. This is useful when you have multiple sidekicks serving different purposes — for example, a sales sidekick shouldn't reference internal HR policies.

Reprocessing

If you update a document and re-upload it, the system will automatically reprocess and re-index the content. You can also manually trigger reprocessing from the document detail view.

WordPress Content Sync

If you use the Sidekick Forge Connect WordPress plugin, your published posts and pages can be automatically synced to your knowledge base. This keeps your sidekick up-to-date with your latest content without manual uploads.

Synced content is treated just like any other document — it's chunked, embedded, and searchable. When content changes on WordPress, the sync process updates the knowledge base automatically.

Improving Answer Quality

If your sidekick isn't giving the answers you expect, try these steps:

"My sidekick doesn't use my documents"

Make sure the documents are fully indexed (status shows "Indexed," not "Processing"). Also check that the document is assigned to the correct sidekick. Try asking the question using the same language that appears in your document.

"The answers are too generic"

Your documents may be too broad. Break large documents into focused topics. A 2-page FAQ about refunds will produce better answers than a 50-page operational manual.

"My sidekick gives outdated information"

Check for old versions of documents in your knowledge base. Remove outdated files and upload the current versions. The sidekick will always use whatever is in the knowledge base.

"Wrong documents are being cited"

This usually means multiple documents cover similar topics. Consolidate overlapping content into a single authoritative document, or restrict document access so each sidekick only sees what's relevant to its purpose.