Choose the right WeKnora command to answer questions from a knowledge base or retrieve source passages. Covers cited answers, custom agents, document searches, and continuing a conversation through the command-line tool.
Use when retrieving from or asking questions against a WeKnora knowledge base via the `weknora` CLI — and especially when unsure whether to use `chat`, `session ask`, or `search chunks` for a given goal.
Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.
REQUIRED BACKGROUND: read the weknora-shared skill first (auth, --kb
resolution, the JSON envelope, exit codes, streaming/NDJSON output).
WeKnora gives you several ways to "ask about a knowledge base." Picking the wrong one wastes turns or returns the wrong shape. Use the decision table.
| Your goal | Command | LLM synthesis? | Returns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural-language answer grounded in a KB | chat "<q>" --kb <kb> | yes | bounded answer events; --reference adds citations; --verbose adds execution detail |
| Answer via a custom agent (its own KB scope, tools, web search) | session ask --agent <id> "<q>" | yes (+ tools) | bounded answer events; --reference adds citations; --verbose adds execution detail |
| Raw context chunks to reason over yourself (no answer) | search chunks "<q>" --kb <kb> | no | ranked chunk list |
| Which documents match a keyword (title/filename) | search docs "<q>" --kb <kb> | no | document list |
| Find a knowledge base by name | search kb "<q>" | no | KB list |
| Find a past session by title | search sessions "<q>" | no | session list |
chat / session ask.
Want chunks to feed into your own reasoning (e.g. you'll synthesize across
sources) → search chunks. Don't call chat just to read source text.chat vs session ask. chat = plain KB RAG Q&A. session ask --agent <id> = invoke a configured custom agent (it may scope its own KBs, call
tools, do web search). If the user set up an agent for this, prefer it
(weknora agent list to find ids); otherwise chat.chat and session ask return a
data.session_id in default JSON output. Pass --session <id> on the next
call to continue the conversation. In NDJSON mode, read it from init.chat, search chunks, search docs need a KB: pass --kb <id-or-name>, or
set WEKNORA_KB_ID, or weknora link the directory (resolved in that order).
If none resolves it's exit 1 (local.kb_id_required); a bad name is exit 1
(local.kb_not_found). Resolve names with weknora kb list / search kb.
(search kb / search sessions are tenant-wide and take no --kb.)chat / session ask return one buffered JSON envelope with answer
events by default. Add --reference for indexed citations and --verbose
for execution detail; use --format ndjson for raw events or --format text for the live human-readable projection.weknora session stop <session-id> --message <message-id> (session_id from
data.session_id, or from init under --format ndjson).
Re-attach to a stream with weknora session resume <session-id> --message <message-id>.search chunks --limit defaults to 8 (tuned for an LLM context window);
the search docs/kb/sessions lists default to 30. Tune retrieval with
--vector-threshold / --keyword-threshold, or --no-vector/--no-keyword
to disable a channel. Details: references/search-chunks.md.# raw retrieval to reason over
weknora search chunks "retry backoff policy" --kb engineering --limit 12
# grounded answer (human transcript)
weknora chat "How do we handle retries?" --kb engineering --format text
# continue the conversation (session id from data.session_id above)
weknora chat "And the max attempts?" --kb engineering --session sess_abc
# answer via a custom agent
weknora session ask --agent ag_123 "Summarize this quarter's incidents"
No reviews yet. Tell others what you thought.
No login needed. Share how it worked for you, ask a question, or note where it did not run.
No comments yet. Be the first to write one.
Extract text and tables from PDFs, fill form fields with supplied data, and merge documents. Includes a pdfplumber text extraction example and scripts for inspecting form fields and extracting text.
Use the weknora CLI to manage knowledge bases and documents, search stored material, and ask questions grounded in it. This shared guide covers authentication, structured JSON results, error handling, and previews of changes.