Files are useful to an agent in two quite different ways. Sometimes you know exactly which document the agent should read — this rate card, this checklist — and you want to name it in the instruction. Other times you have a body of material and the agent needs to find the relevant part of it. The platform supports both.
Naming a specific file in an instruction
An AI instruction can link directly to a file in one of the thunk's content folders. The agent reads that exact document while it works.
To add one, use the link control in the instruction editor and switch the link kind from Web address to Content file. You then pick the folder and the file inside it, and the link is inserted with the file's folder/file name as its text.
This is better than pasting a Drive or SharePoint URL into the instruction, for two reasons:
It is readable. "Check the claim against
Policies/Auto Claims Handbook" says what the agent will read. A forty-character document id does not.It survives changes to the file. The link names the folder and the file, and is resolved against the thunk's content folders every time it is used. Replace the underlying document with a new version — a different upload, a move from a local copy to a Drive file — and the instruction keeps working untouched.
A few things to know:
The reference is by name, so renaming the folder or the file breaks it. Rename deliberately.
If two files in the same folder have the same name, the reference is refused rather than guessed at. This is intentional — quietly picking one of two policy documents is not an acceptable outcome.
References work within their own thunk. A thunk cannot reference another thunk's content files.
Content file links point at Documents and Compliance Policies style folders. Spreadsheet folders are not addressed this way; their contents reach agents as tools instead — see Spreadsheet Content Folders.
The same links work for readers, not just agents: clicking one in the product opens the document.
Letting the agent search a body of files
When there is too much material to name a specific file, put it in a content folder. The platform reads the contents of every document in the folder, indexes it, and automatically creates a search tool for that folder — search_documents for the default Documents folder, search_compliance_policies for the Compliance Policies folder, and a correspondingly named tool for any folder you create.
Agents in the thunk can use those search tools without any configuration. An agent handling a support case can search the product documentation folder for the relevant passage; a step assessing an exception can search the policy folder for the rule that applies.
Because the index is built from what is inside the files, this works across formats — PDFs, Word documents, presentations, web pages captured as documents — and scales from a handful of files to thousands.
Filling a folder from your file systems
Content folders can be filled from the same sources as any other file value, and a few more besides:
From a form, one file at a time, using the local / Google Drive / OneDrive picker.
In bulk from a file system, selecting many files at once.
From a spreadsheet of links, importing a list of documents.
By asking the planning agent, in plain language — "add every Google Drive document whose name starts with ProductInfo", or "add the top 50 pages from this support site".
Through the API, when documents and their properties come from another system.
Newly added documents show as working until the platform has finished reading and indexing them, then become ready for use. Folders can also define AI properties — structured fields an agent extracts from each document as it is indexed — which make later retrieval much more precise. See Content Folders for how to curate a folder well.
What comes back is data, not instructions
Search results from a content folder are given to the agent as untrusted content: material to reason about, never commands to follow. The exception is the Compliance Policies folder, which exists precisely so its contents can direct agent behavior. Curate that folder accordingly — it is the one place where what a document says carries authority.