What are artefacts?

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?

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

• 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

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.

Building on your own template

Attach a PowerPoint (.potx) or Word (.dotx) template to the conversation, or save one on the assistant as an attachment, and presentations and documents are built on it. If several templates are attached, name the one you want in your request.

A Skill can ship a template too. Once the Skill is active in a conversation, presentations and documents built there can use it. A template you attach yourself stays the default.

Following the structure of an existing file

Attach a Word document or PowerPoint file and ask for a new one like it. The assistant reads the file’s structure — headings, numbered lists, tables, sections and slide layouts — and follows it in the document it writes, rather than copying only its look.

Editing an artefact

There are two ways to change an artefact, and they work on the same document.

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

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

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, with Format & download PDF, Intric can spend a little time formatting it properly first — which counts toward your usage.

Diagrams download as PDF, not as Word. If you need one in a Word document, ask the assistant for a text version of it.