# Knowledge bases and conversation attachments

A knowledge base holds information that a team uses over time and makes it available for retrieval when an agent answers questions. Conversation attachments support the current task, such as a one-time summary, comparison, or extraction.

| Need | Use |
| --- | --- |
| Compare two documents once | Attachments in a new conversation |
| Repeatedly answer questions about a product manual | A knowledge base bound to an agent |
| Share policies across several agents | Material maintained in Resource Center and bound to each agent |
| Analyze business tables with defined metrics | Structured imports and NL2SQL semantics |
| Add business interpretation or approved answers to document Q&A | RAG business rules or standard Q&A |

## From source material to an answer

Create the knowledge base → import material → wait for file processing → inspect originals and chunks → bind the agent → ask questions and verify sources.

A knowledge base can show **Ready** while individual files are still processing. A file appearing in the list does not mean parsing and indexing have finished. Check each target file before validating answers.

Next: [Create a knowledge base](create-kb.md).