What knowledge retrieval does
Behind the scenes, every file you put in your IP Vault (your personal vault, your Digital Twin’s shared vault, and the account-wide vault) is processed and indexed. When you ask a question with retrieval turned on, Pria:- Searches the indexed content for the passages most relevant to your question.
- Hands those passages to the model as context.
- The model composes an answer that quotes or paraphrases your material and cites the source files.
Where the Knowledge controls live
Open the [+] (Actions) menu to the left of the input pill and choose Knowledge. The panel expands inline with everything that shapes a reply’s context:
The [+] Actions menu → Knowledge panel: Remember History, Manage Memory, the Sources radio, and the Search Only output toggle.
- Remember History — how many recent exchanges stay in context (see Conversation History).
- Manage Memory — long-term facts Pria remembers about you (see User Memory).
- Sources — the retrieval mode (below).
- Search Only — an output toggle (below).
Sources: how Pria searches
The Sources radio is the core choice. It has two states — and the “on” state quietly upgrades itself when a knowledge graph is available.Disabled
RAG
RAG + KAG Fusion
Search Only (toggle)

Instance Settings → Knowledge: an admin enables KAG Fusion (hybrid dense RAG + knowledge-graph retrieval) and tunes ingestion for the Twin's vault.

Settings → Personal → Knowledge: turn on “Enable KAG Fusion for my files” to build a knowledge graph over your personal vault. Files inside an organisation's Twin follow that Twin's setting instead.
When to use each
Leave Sources on (RAG / Fusion) for…
Leave Sources on (RAG / Fusion) for…
- “What does the policy say about X?”
- “Summarise the second chapter.”
- “Find every place we mention vendor Y.”
- “How are X and Y related?” / “Who else works on Jane’s projects?” — these lean on the Fusion graph leg when one’s available.
- Most everyday questions where the answer is somewhere in your material.
Turn on Search Only for…
Turn on Search Only for…
- Skimming for primary sources before writing your own draft.
- Verifying a claim — get the passages without an LLM rephrasing.
- Auditing what the retrieval layer is actually seeing.
- Quick lookups where you trust your own reading over a synthesised answer.
Set Sources to Disabled for…
Set Sources to Disabled for…
- General knowledge questions unrelated to your files.
- Comparing Pria’s “off-the-shelf” answer to a grounded one.
- Speed runs where you don’t need the retrieval step at all.
- Diagnosing whether a wrong answer was caused by retrieval picking the wrong passages.
Showing or hiding retrieved passages
When retrieval runs, Pria can show you exactly what it pulled in — a collapsible panel beneath each answer, so you can verify the reply against its sources. Whether the panel appears is governed by the Display RAG/KAG Search Details toggle under Settings → Instance → Personalization → Display Details (the same place as the thinking-display toggles). In Search Only mode the passages are the entire response — there’s nothing to hide them under.KAG / RAG Search Results
Expand the KAG Search Results (or RAG Search Results) disclosure at the foot of a reply to see every passage that fed the answer. Each row shows the source file (and segment), a preview of the matched text, its Relevance score, and its Length, with numbered citations you can click to open the original.
Expanding “KAG Search Results: (4)” reveals the four passages behind the answer — source file, preview, relevance %, and length.
patent-application-update.md, scored ~50–52% relevant — the answer is built from those passages, and the citations jump straight to them.
Agent Details — what ran
When a reply also runs a tool — image generation, web search, an MCP connector, code — a separate Tool Details (Agent Details) disclosure appears. Expanded, it shows, per call: the tool name, a Success / failure status, the execution duration, the Arguments it was invoked with, and the Response it returned.
Tool Details for a tool call: the tool name, Success status, duration, the arguments passed, and the response returned.
File scope: which vault gets searched
Every retrieval call looks across the vaults you have access to:Limitations
- Confidential files stay locked for everyone but their owner. A file marked Confidential can still lend its knowledge to answers, but other members never see its details — retrieval shows them a ”🔒 CONFIDENTIAL” marker and a short redacted snippet instead of the document. Only the owner gets full citations and preview. See What Confidential really means.
- Very recent uploads may still be indexing. Large PDFs, audio, and video files take a few minutes to extract, chunk, and embed. If a brand-new file isn’t appearing in retrieval yet, give it a moment and check Files for processing status.
- Disabled skips ALL files. Don’t leave Sources off by accident if you actually need grounded answers — your replies will go back to “general knowledge only”.
- Fusion needs RAG. The graph leg always sits on top of the dense RAG leg; there’s no “graph only”. With Sources disabled, neither runs.
- Search quality depends on file quality. Scanned PDFs without OCR, password-locked files, and corrupt uploads can’t be indexed. Check the file status in the IP Vault to see what’s processed.
Related
- IP Vault — what the vault is and how scopes work.
- Managing Files — uploading, organising, sharing, deleting.
- Audio Notes — voice memos that flow through the same retrieval pipeline.
- Conversation History — the Remember History control in the same menu.
- User Memory — the Manage Memory link in the same menu.
- Reasoning & Thinking — combine high effort with grounded retrieval for the best research answers.