Files & Resources
Alongside Chat, each workspace window has Knowledge, Downloads, and Assets sections. Web results can be added to Assets, while Profile is managed from node settings. This guide covers how to upload files, what types are supported, and how the model uses your files when answering questions.
The workspace sections
The workspace toolbar has four sections: Chat, Knowledge, Downloads, and Assets. Profile is a node-level view opened from Node Settings rather than a workspace section. These sections aren't storage for its own sake — the content in them is context that can inform the model's responses. Files you've uploaded, pages fetched during research, and facts from your knowledge base are all drawn on automatically when they're relevant to what you're asking.
Uploading files
Click Upload in the Assets section to add a file to the workspace. Files are durably stored on the node. They may be sent through SaaS to extraction or inference services when the configured processing path requires it. After upload, the file is processed: text-native files (plain text, Markdown, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML) are ingested directly into the knowledge base. Binary files — PDFs and images — go through an extraction step that converts them to readable text first. Other formats, including Word and Excel documents, are not currently accepted; export or copy their content into a supported format such as plain text, Markdown, CSV, or PDF.
Both paths result in the file's content being available to the model when it's relevant. The processing happens automatically in the background after upload; you don't need to do anything once the file is uploaded.
A 10 MB per-file limit applies to uploads; the node rejects files larger than 10 MB. For large documents, consider splitting them into smaller files by section or chapter.
Supported file types
Two categories of file are supported: text-native and extractable. Text-native files are read directly — their content is plain text that needs no conversion. Extractable files go through a processing step that converts them to text before they're ingested.
| Type | Extensions | How it's processed |
|---|---|---|
| Plain text | .txt |
Read directly |
| Markdown | .md |
Read directly |
| HTML | .html, .htm |
Read directly |
| CSV | .csv |
Read directly |
| JSON | .json |
Read directly |
| XML | .xml |
Read directly |
| YAML | .yaml, .yml |
Read directly |
.pdf |
Text extracted by the extraction service | |
| Image | .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .webp |
Visual content extracted by the extraction service |
Files that don't match any of the supported types are stored but not processed — the model cannot read their content. If you need to reference content from an unsupported file format, copy the relevant text into a plain text or Markdown file and upload that.
How the model uses uploaded files
When you send a question, Varen searches your uploaded files — along with your knowledge base — for content relevant to the question. If a file contains relevant content, it's included in the model's context automatically. You don't need to tell Varen which files are relevant; it works this out from the content of your question.
You can also refer to files by name to bring them in explicitly — "summarise the Q4 report I uploaded" or "what does the lease say about the break clause?" This is useful when the question is specifically about that document and you want to make sure the model focuses on it.
For dense reference documents — a tenancy agreement, a financial statement, an inspection report, a medical letter — uploading them and then asking specific questions is often more effective than pasting the text into a message. The model can re-read the file in future sessions without you re-uploading it, and you can ask different questions about the same document across multiple sessions.
Downloads
When the model produces a file as part of a response — a formatted document, a spreadsheet, a structured brief, a draft letter — it appears in the Downloads section of the workspace window. Click the filename to download it to your device. Downloads are associated with the workspace and remain available in future sessions, so you can come back and retrieve a document the model produced weeks ago without needing to regenerate it.
Web search
Varen can search the web as part of answering a question. Results appear in a collapsible Web results panel in the conversation. You can open a result in a new tab or use Add to Assets to fetch it into the workspace for later retrieval.
When a response includes citations, web citations open the source in a new tab. Web results and citations are evidence of what was retrieved, not a guarantee that a source is current, authoritative, or applicable to your situation.
Templates
Outcome workflows are planned guided workflows with a defined output document. Rather than a free conversation, a template session leads you through the information needed to complete a specific artefact — a tax return, a staff onboarding record, an incident report. Varen asks the questions, you provide the answers, and the session ends with the document complete. The structure, the required fields, and the completion condition are all intended to be defined by the workflow. Outcome creation is currently disabled and the Outcome Ledger is a placeholder.