Ask a question

Ask puts a question to the sources in your project's library and gives you an answer that cites them. This page is the practical guide: how to ask, how to check an answer, how to follow up, and what you can make from an answer afterwards. If you want to know what Pangur does between your question and the answer, and which limits a question uses, read How Ask answers.

Asking a first questionCopy Anchor Link

Open Ask from the menu. On an empty Ask page the field suggests a shape for your question ("What do my sources say about…?"). Type your question and press Enter, or choose the arrow button. You can also type a question into the search field on the home page and press ⌘Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows and Linux), which sends it to Ask.

While Pangur works, a status line tells you what it is doing. It begins with searching your library, adds a line for each further step it takes, and then says that it is starting and writing the answer. The answer appears as it is written. If you want to stop it, choose Stop, which takes the place of the send button while an answer is in progress; whatever has been written so far stays in the conversation.

Ask does best with a question that gives it something specific to search for. "What does Baillie say about the 1638 Assembly?" names a person, an event and a year, and each of those is something Pangur can look for in your texts. Bear in mind that Ask works only from what is in your library. If you ask about a work you do not hold, or hold only as a catalogue entry, the answer says so rather than guessing.

Suggested questionsCopy Anchor Link

An empty Ask page shows up to six suggested questions, which Pangur builds from your library without using a model. They might offer a summary of your newest work, a comparison of two works, a timeline or map of a topic, or a transcription of a manuscript. Choosing one asks it at once.

Checking the answerCopy Anchor Link

Each number in the answer, such as [1] or [2], is a button. Choosing it scrolls to that source in the Sources list below the answer. For each source you can choose Open in the reader (or Open at p. 12, when the page is known), which opens the PDF at the passage and highlights it. A recording opens at the time of the passage, and a table or document opens at the relevant place. Show the whole passage shows the full quotation without leaving the page.

Below the sources is a section called How this answer was found. It lists the steps Ask took and the works that matched your question but were not quoted, which is often the quickest way to see whether something you expected was overlooked. When the answer cites two or more works from your library, How these sources connect shows which of them cite one another.

Under the question, a line beginning "Answered by" names the model that wrote the answer. If Pangur recorded the answer's usage, another line gives the number of tokens the model read and wrote and the time taken.

If no model was available, the answer consists only of the matching passages, and a line above them says so.

Following up and asking againCopy Anchor Link

Once an answer has arrived, the field invites a follow-up. Ask reads the earlier questions and answers in the conversation, so a follow-up can refer back to them ("what does he say about her?").

To change a question you have already asked, choose Edit beside it. The question returns to the field with a warning that the answers from that point on will be replaced. When you send it, Pangur deletes that question and every later one in the conversation and asks again from there. If you change your mind, choose Keep the conversation as it is.

Asking about a passage while readingCopy Anchor Link

You can also ask about the document you are reading, from inside the PDF viewer. Select a passage, choose Ask in the selection bar, type your question and choose Ask again.

Pangur sends your question together with the selected passage (up to 4,000 characters) and its page number. It searches this document first and adds a few passages from the rest of your library for comparison, and the model is told to answer from this document first and to say when it draws on others. Sources taken from the document are labelled "This document", and choosing one turns to its page. Follow-up questions keep the same passage until you select another.

If you want to ask about the document without selecting anything, choose Ask about this document in the viewer's toolbar. Either way, the conversation in the panel is an ordinary Ask conversation: it appears in your list of conversations, it uses the same limits, and Open in Ask continues it on the Ask page.

On an iPhone or iPad, select a passage in the PDF reader and choose Ask to open the same panel.

Documents and figures in answersCopy Anchor Link

An answer can include a document, such as a short report or a reading list. While the model is writing one, a card in the conversation says so, and the document opens in a panel beside the conversation (on a phone, once it is finished). From the panel you can choose Copy this document, or Save to outputs to keep it among your project's outputs. After saving, the panel links to the saved copy. Saving the same document twice keeps one copy, not two.

An answer that has no document can be turned into one with Convert to a document, which appears under the answer. The document takes your question as its title.

Answers can also include figures, which Pangur draws in the conversation. Each kind has a size limit:

When a table or chart is drawn from a spreadsheet or dataset in your library, Pangur runs a read-only query on the table and shows the query alongside the rows, so you can see where the figures came from. If the model writes a figure that Pangur cannot draw, the figure is shown as plain text instead.

Getting a full write-upCopy Anchor Link

Under the newest answer, Expand — full write-up writes a longer version of the answer in the background and files it among your project's outputs. It uses a separate long-form model, which not every deployment has; when the model is unavailable the button does not appear. By default each person can have four full write-ups a day.

Proposals from AskCopy Anchor Link

Ask sometimes offers to do something for you, such as analysing a source, creating a collection, or looking online for a PDF. It says what it would do and then waits. Choose Go ahead to let it proceed or Not now to decline, and when the work is finished an Open button takes you to the result. When the offer is to look at a manuscript leaf, the buttons are instead Read the leaf and Answer without it, because reading a leaf uses a vision model and counts against a daily allowance (manuscript leaves in answers).

When a work in your library has no full text, Ask may offer Add a PDF. After you add one, Pangur reads it within a few minutes, and you can ask the question again.

Rating and tagging answersCopy Anchor Link

Under each answer, Helpful and Not helpful rate it, and choosing the same button a second time withdraws the rating. The ratings are read by administrators, who compare them for each model. Tags on this answer attaches research tags to the answer so that it can be found later with the rest of the material on a theme.

Copy this answer copies the answer's text. Generate an exhibition from this answer and its sources starts an exhibition draft, on deployments and accounts where publishing is available (Make an exhibition).

Your conversationsCopy Anchor Link

Recent conversations lists the 50 conversations you have used most recently, and Search conversations… searches their titles. Pangur names each conversation after its subject and renames it if the subject moves on; until it has a subject, the title is the first question.

To start a new conversation, choose the + button in the header. To delete one, choose its delete button, which names the conversation. Deleting a conversation removes its questions and answers and nothing in your library, because nothing in the library depends on a conversation.

Conversations are personal. Other members of a shared project do not see yours, and you do not see theirs. In an organisation's project, members with the viewer role can still ask questions, save answers, rate them and delete their own conversations.

When something goes wrongCopy Anchor Link

If an answer fails, Ask says that something went wrong and gives a reference you can quote to support. If your connection drops while an answer is being written, Pangur finishes the answer on its server, and the web client and the iPhone and iPad app fetch it and show it once it has been filed. You cannot ask a question while offline; on an iPhone or iPad, Ask tells you that it needs a connection.

Ask also refuses a question when you have reached one of its limits. The messages ("That is a lot of questions in an hour", "You've met today's fair-use allowance", "You have used this library's model allowance for today") are explained under limits and allowances.

Ask on other devices and toolsCopy Anchor Link

Pangur for Mac shows the same Ask page as the web. The iPhone and iPad app has its own Ask, with your conversations under All conversations, and a link to a conversation opens there at the answer it points to. From a terminal, pangur ask "your question" asks your library and pangur threads list lists your conversations. An assistant connected over MCP can read your conversations and add its own answers to them, labelled as its own. See The command line and Assistants and Pangur.