How citations and grounding work

Why every answer points back at your content.

C
ChatteringJuly 22, 2026

Chattering answers only from the sources you gave it. This is called grounding, and it is why answers carry numbered citations.

What happens on each question

  1. The question is matched against your indexed passages
  2. The best-matching passages are handed to the model as the only material it may use
  3. The answer comes back with a citation marker for each passage it drew on

Click a citation and you see the source it came from.

When it cannot answer

If nothing in your content covers the question, the AI says so rather than guessing. That is deliberate — a confident wrong answer costs far more than an honest "I don't have that".

Those moments are recorded as content gaps, visible on your Overview and in Help center → Content gaps, so you can see exactly which questions your documentation is missing.

Need more help? Browse all articles or ask the assistant in the chat — it answers from these docs and can connect you with the team.

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How citations and grounding work | Chattering Help Center | Chattering.ai