Working with the agent
Give the agent context
Tell the agent what the survey is, how you like to work, and which documents it can draw on — once, on the Instructions tab, instead of in every prompt. Context lives with the project.
What context is for #
Context supplements what the agent can infer from metadata alone. Use it for:
- Survey context the agent can't derive from variable labels (e.g. "this was a B2B panel, not general population").
- Interpretation rules ("always weight by wgt_design", "report column percentages by default").
- Caveats about the data ("Q12 was asked only in wave 3").
- House style preferences ("use 95% confidence level", "always include unweighted base").
Where context lives #
Everything below is on the Instructions tab:
- Dataset brief
- What the data represents — the survey, sample, and fieldwork. Build it with the guided wizard, or drop in a project brief, methodology note, or proposal (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, TXT, MD) and Recense parses it into the brief's sections.
- Survey questionnaire
- Optional. Upload the questionnaire used to run the survey and the agent uses it to write better variable and value labels.
- Skills
- Durable conventions the agent should always follow — analysis conventions, terminology, business rules, and preferences. Create, duplicate, or delete your own.
- Organisation instructions
- Instructions shared across your organisation's projects.
- Project knowledge
- Reference files and reviewed facts — see below.
Project knowledge #
- Reference files are documents the agent can search and cite as evidence. Upload a file or paste text; mention one in chat with @project-file. Files are parsed locally and are never sent to an AI provider while being ingested.
- Reference files are evidence only — text inside them never becomes an instruction to the agent or an approval for a change.
- Curated records are small facts or instructions you review field by field and approve before they can enter the agent's prompt. You can correct, retire, restore, or pin a record; each change is kept as a revision.
- Limits: 20 MiB per file, 100 files, 500 PDF pages, and 10 retained revisions per file.
Tips #
- Keep context factual and specific. "This survey has 2,400 respondents from the UK aged 18+" is useful. "Analyse this data well" is not.
- Put conventions you want everywhere in a skill; put facts about this dataset in the brief or a curated record.
- Update the brief when the dataset or analysis requirements change.