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The knowledge base gives your telli agent access to your own documents so it can answer questions using your specific information during calls. Instead of relying only on its system prompt, the agent can search through your uploaded files in real time to find accurate answers. Think of it as giving your agent a reference manual it can flip through mid-conversation. When a caller asks something that’s covered in your documents, the agent will look it up and respond with the right information.

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Quick Start

1

Create a knowledge base and upload your files

Go to Knowledge Base in the sidebar navigation, click Create, give your knowledge base a name, and upload up to 5 files (PDF, Word, TXT, or Markdown).
2

Wait for processing

Your knowledge base will process your documents (usually takes less than a few minutes)
3

Integrate your knowledge base into your agent

Go to Agent Settings → Knowledge Base section, select your knowledge base, and save.
  • FAQs & company info: Upload your frequently asked questions so the agent handles common inquiries accurately
  • Product details & pricing: Give the agent access to your catalog so it can answer specific product questions
  • Policies & procedures: Upload return policies, terms of service, or internal procedures
  • Service descriptions: Detailed descriptions of your services that are too long for the system prompt
  • Any reference material: Anything you’d want a human employee to have on their desk while taking calls
Example: You upload your company’s FAQ document, product catalog, or pricing sheet. When a caller asks “What are your opening hours?” or “How much does the premium plan cost?”, your agent searches the knowledge base and gives the correct answer straight from your own documents.

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Advanced Knowledge Base Capabilities

Most agents work well with the defaults. If you want to fine-tune how your documents are split and retrieved, expand the Advanced Configuration section on a knowledge base to adjust:
Start with the defaults. Only tune these if you notice the agent missing relevant info (try a larger chunk size or more retrieval results) or pulling in irrelevant content (try a smaller chunk size or fewer retrieval results).

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Set up your knowledge base with Charlie

You don’t have to wire up the knowledge base by hand. Once you’ve created one, Charlie, the AI assistant in the Agent Builder, can attach it to your agent and adjust its behavior for you. Charlie can’t create the knowledge base itself, so create it first under Knowledge Base in the sidebar.
  • Attach an existing knowledge base to the agent
  • Adjust the in-progress message the agent says while it searches
  • Tune the advanced configuration (chunk size, overlap, retrieval results)

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Best Practices

  • Keep documents focused: A document about one topic works better than a massive document covering everything.
  • Use clear headings: Especially in .md and .docx files, headings help telli break up the content into searchable sections.
  • Be explicit: Write your documents the way you’d want someone to answer the phone. If the answer to “What are your hours?” is in your document, make sure it clearly says something like “Our opening hours are Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm”.
  • Update when things change: If your pricing, policies, or hours change, update the files in your knowledge base so the agent always has current information.
  • Use the right format: PDFs work great for existing documents. Markdown or plain text is ideal if you’re writing content specifically for the agent.

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Good to Know

  • The knowledge base is processed once when you create or update it, so there’s no ongoing delay on every call
  • The agent decides on its own when to search the knowledge base. You don’t need to configure specific trigger phrases
  • If the agent can’t find relevant information in the knowledge base, it will fall back to its general knowledge and system prompt
  • Processing status is shown on the knowledge base card. You’ll see a spinner while it’s being processed, and an error indicator if something went wrong
Explicitly instruct the agent when to use @searchKnowledgeBase in your prompt to have more control over when the agent is using the KB.