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Knowledge Library

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The Knowledge Library is Protos's institutional memory. Every decision, data point, and reference is captured here and linked to the design artifacts that used it — so nothing is ever lost between projects, teams, or people.

Set this up before using the Co-engineer. The Co-engineer draws on the Knowledge Library when creating schemas, filling data documents, and answering questions. The richer the library, the more grounded and traceable its output.

On This Page

What Lives Here

Type Examples
Academic literature Papers, standards, patents — uploaded as PDF or TXT files
Internal reports Experimental summaries, design reviews, test reports
Decisions Why a parameter value was chosen; why an approach was rejected
Experimental results Test reports and datasets uploaded as files or captured as text notes
AI-surfaced connections Co-engineer surfaces relevant prior work as you design

Finding Knowledge

  1. Open Knowledge Library from the sidebar.
  2. Search by keyword, author, domain, or date.
  3. Filter by type: paper, internal doc, dataset, or decision.
  4. Click any result to see its full content and all the places in Protos where it has been used.

Tip: Before starting a new project or design iteration, search for prior experiments and decisions in the same domain. Co-engineer can also surface relevant entries automatically as you work on the canvas.

Adding to the Library

Upload a file

  1. Click Add in the Knowledge Library.
  2. Upload a PDF, TXT, or JSON file — a paper, test report, spec document, or any reference material.
  3. Protos chunks and embeds the content, making it searchable and available as context for the Co-engineer.
  4. Add tags and a description to make it easier to find later.

Type a note directly

If you want to capture a decision or rationale without a file:

  1. Click Add → Text.
  2. Type the content — e.g. "Chose 1.2 mol/L based on the conductivity data from the Q1 electrolyte study — peak conductivity at this concentration under our temperature range."
  3. The note is stored, embedded, and searchable just like an uploaded file.

Upload a folder

For bulk ingestion of many files at once:

  1. Click Add → Folder.
  2. Upload a folder of files — Protos processes them in the background.
  3. A progress indicator tracks succeeded and failed files.

Traceability

When the Co-engineer creates or updates a data document using information from the Knowledge Library, it records which specific chunks of which documents it drew on. This means you can see exactly where a field value came from — not just "the Co-engineer said so" but the specific source passage.

Field value in data document
  └── Knowledge Library chunk
        └── Original uploaded document (paper, report, note)

This chain is preserved permanently — even if team members leave or projects are archived.

Best Practices

  • Capture decisions as they're made, not retrospectively. The rationale is clearest in the moment and grows harder to reconstruct over time.
  • Link papers to specific claims, not just to the paper itself. Trace is only useful if it points to the exact piece of evidence that informed a decision.
  • Agree on a tag taxonomy with your team before tagging — e.g. by domain, material, or property type. Inconsistent tags make search unreliable.
  • Review the library at project kickoff: search for prior experiments and decisions before starting new work. Don't repeat work that's already been done.

See Also

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