Inaccurate KB answers
When your agent answers from a knowledge base incorrectly, check it's attached to the agent, then review and re-index the content.
Symptoms
- The agent gives wrong, outdated, or incomplete answers from a knowledge base.
- It misses details that are clearly in your original document — or ignores the knowledge base entirely.
Why this happens
There are two common causes:
- The knowledge base isn't attached to the agent, so the agent never uses it.
- The knowledge base is attached, but the indexed content — the text the agent actually retrieves — is wrong, incomplete, or stale.
Work through them in order.
1. Check the knowledge base is attached to the agent
The agent only uses knowledge bases that are attached to it on its Context tab. If it isn't attached, the content doesn't matter — the agent never sees it. Only knowledge bases that have finished processing (status Ready) appear in the list to attach.
Open the agent
Go to Voice Agents, select the agent, and open its Context tab.
Open Agent config
In the top bar, click the gear button (Agent config) to open the config panel.
Go to the Knowledge base tab
In the left list of the Agent config panel, click Knowledge base. The panel lists your ready knowledge bases. If it's empty, you'll see 'No knowledge bases yet — add one with "New".' — use New to create one first.
Attach the knowledge base
Find the knowledge base in the list and tick its checkmark to attach it. The checkmark fills in and its tooltip changes to "Attached — click to detach". (Tick more than one to attach several.)
Save
Click Save to apply. Attaching only takes effect once you save.
Re-test the agent. If it's attached and answers are still off, fix the content below.
2. Review and fix the indexed content
Your agent doesn't re-read the original file on every call — it retrieves from the indexed content that was extracted when the knowledge base was processed. If extraction missed a section, garbled a table, or the source has since changed, the answers will be off.
Open the knowledge base
Go to Knowledge Base in the sidebar and click the knowledge base's name to open it.
Review the indexed content
The viewer shows the indexed content — exactly what the agent retrieves on a call. Compare it against your source; for a PDF, use View original to open the uploaded file side by side. Look for missing sections, garbled tables, or extra clutter (navigation, repeated headers).
Make your changes
Edit the text directly in the viewer — correct mistakes, add missing details, and remove noise. An Unsaved changes note appears as you edit.
Save & Re-index
Click Save & Re-index. Your edits are re-chunked and re-embedded, and the status returns to Ready in a few seconds.
Re-test the agent
Ask the agent the same question again to confirm the answer is now correct.
For a website knowledge base that's gone stale, use Recrawl — the refresh icon button on that knowledge base's row in the Knowledge Base list — to pull fresh content from the URL. Note: recrawling replaces your manual edits with the newly scraped text.
Only a knowledge base in the Ready state is used on calls, and only Ready knowledge bases can be attached to an agent. If one is stuck on Processing, Indexing, or shows Failed, wait for it to finish — or re-upload — before testing.
For how knowledge bases are extracted, chunked, and retrieved, see Knowledge Base.