AI chat

How AI reasoning works in ThinkEx.

The AI chat panel sits alongside your canvas. Unlike general-purpose AI chat tools, the AI in ThinkEx only works with content you explicitly select. There is no hidden retrieval, no automatic context window management — you decide what the AI sees.

How context selection works

Before sending a message, click on one or more cards on your canvas to select them. Selected cards are added to the chat context, and the AI reasons only over those cards.

This gives you precise control. You can point the AI at a single paragraph in a PDF, a specific flashcard deck, or a combination of sources, and ask it to find connections that only emerge when those specific pieces are visible together.

Selecting a small number of closely related cards tends to produce sharper, more focused answers than sending your entire workspace at once.

What the AI can do

The AI has access to a set of tools it can use automatically when answering your questions. You do not need to invoke these manually — the AI decides which tools to use based on your request.

Web search

Search the web for current information. Useful when you need the AI to supplement your workspace content with up-to-date facts or sources it doesn’t already have.

Fetch a webpage

Retrieve the content of a specific URL. If you paste a link into your message, the AI can fetch the page and use it in its response.

Search your workspace

Search across all cards in your workspace by name or content. The AI uses this to locate relevant cards when answering questions that span multiple sources.

Read workspace cards

Read the full content of specific cards in your workspace. The AI uses this when it needs to go deeper into a source it found during a workspace search.

Create a document

Generate a new document card directly in your workspace. When you ask the AI to summarize, draft, or research something, it can save the output as a persistent document card rather than leaving it only in the chat thread.

Create flashcards

Generate a flashcard deck from content in your workspace or chat. Ask the AI to create study cards from a PDF, a document, or any other selected content.

Create a quiz

Generate a multiple-choice or true/false quiz from workspace content. The AI writes questions, answer options, and explanations for each item.

Edit an existing card

Update the content of an existing card — for example, to refine a document the AI previously created, or to update a flashcard deck with new material.

Search and add YouTube videos

Search YouTube for videos and add them to your workspace as YouTube cards. Useful when you want to bring in a video source the AI found during research.

Execute code

Run code to perform calculations, process data, or generate results that would be impractical to compute by reasoning alone.

Switching AI models

You can change the AI model at any time from the model picker in the chat panel. Each conversation can use a different model — there is no workspace-level model lock-in. Switch models to match the task: a faster model for quick lookups, a more capable one for deep analysis.

Threads

Each conversation is a thread. Threads are scoped to a workspace — the chat history from one workspace does not appear in another.

You can create multiple threads within the same workspace to keep separate lines of inquiry organized. Switch between threads using the thread list in the chat panel header. Each thread retains its full message history.

Threads are per-user. Collaborators on a shared workspace each have their own threads and do not see each other’s chat history.