Artefacts · 1 min read
What are artefacts?
How an artefact differs from an ordinary answer, which formats exist, and how editing and versions work.
An artefact is a piece of work with its own identity: it has a type, it persists beyond the message that created it, and it can be revised without starting the conversation over. An ordinary answer is text in a chat; an artefact is a thing you can open, edit, and hand to someone.
Artefact or answer?
Section titled “Artefact or answer?”Ask a question and get a short answer, and that’s just chat text. Ask for something you’d want to keep, revise, or share on its own — a report, a slide deck, a piece of code. Intric creates it as an artefact instead, opening it in a panel beside the conversation.
Supported types
Section titled “Supported types”- Documents — formatted text output, suitable for a Word document.
- Presentations — slide decks you can preview slide by slide.
- Spreadsheets — tabular data you can preview and export.
- Code, HTML and diagrams — code in any language, standalone HTML, SVG graphics, and Mermaid diagrams all render as artefacts too.
Where artefacts come from
Section titled “Where artefacts come from”An artefact can come from a conversation, when you ask for one directly, or from a plan, when one of its steps produces a file. Either way, it lands in the Artefacts tab.
Editing an artefact
Section titled “Editing an artefact”There are two ways to change an artefact, and they work on the same document.
Asking the assistant
Section titled “Asking the assistant”Ask for the change — “shorten the introduction,” “add a slide about pricing” — and the artefact updates in place rather than starting over. You can toggle between the rendered preview and the raw source at any point.
Editing it yourself
Section titled “Editing it yourself”Switch a text artefact into edit mode and a formatting toolbar appears under the panel header, with grouped buttons for headings and paragraphs, for lists, and for bold, italic and underline. Entering edit mode doesn’t shift or reflow the text, and it keeps your place in the document rather than jumping back to the top.
In a markdown artefact you can also format inline code and code blocks, which are syntax-highlighted in the preview.
Downloading an artefact
Section titled “Downloading an artefact”Download the raw source, or convert it to PDF, DOCX, PPTX or XLSX depending on the artefact’s type. Converting to PDF can either happen instantly as-is, or Intric can spend a little time formatting it properly first — which counts toward your usage.