> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.summand.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Ask Summand

> How to get useful answers out of the in-product assistant.

**Summand** is the AI assistant inside every Summand dataset. It answers questions in plain English and generates charts on demand, grounded in the dataset's [semantic layer](/concepts/semantic-layer).

## What Summand can do

* Answer questions about the data (*"What's the mean of `revenue` by segment?"*).
* Generate one-shot SQL and run it against your curated data via Athena.
* Generate charts (*"Show me a histogram of `tenure` colored by `churned`."*).
* Explain feature importance and shape functions when a Predictors experiment has run.
* Drill into surprising rows when a Surprise-finding experiment has run.
* **Draft views** — *"build me a view that joins orders with customers"* — with a save button on the rendered SQL.

## What Summand can't do

* **Modify the dataset.** No re-uploads, no schema changes, no sharing actions from chat — those are explicit UI operations.
* **Run mutations.** SQL is read-only; no `INSERT` / `UPDATE` / `DELETE`.
* **Reach data you don't own.** Same authorization model as the rest of the product, enforced through OpenFGA.

## How to ask better questions

<Steps>
  <Step title="Be specific about the column">
    Instead of *"what's the relationship between price and sales,"* say *"plot `unit_price` against `units_sold` and add a regression line."* Summand performs better with explicit column names.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add context once, not every message">
    The dataset's **Context** field (set on the Configuration sidebar) is included in every Summand turn. Put dataset-level facts there — *"orders in USD, B2C only, Q1 2026"* — instead of repeating them per message.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Iterate on charts">
    The first chart is rarely the right one. Ask for changes in plain English: *"color this by region,"* *"flip the axes,"* *"only show the top 10 categories."* Summand edits the chart in place.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Use Summand to navigate, not to write">
    Summand is most useful for questions that map to one or two semantic-layer reads. For multi-paragraph reports, use it to draft, then edit by hand — don't rely on it to write narrative analysis end-to-end.
  </Step>
</Steps>

## Limits

| Tier            | Questions | Conversation history | Message length | Context window |
| --------------- | --------- | -------------------- | -------------- | -------------- |
| Free            | 20 / week | 7 days               | 2,000 chars    | 4,000 tokens   |
| Pro / Education | Unlimited | 90 days              | 4,000 chars    | 8,000 tokens   |
| Enterprise      | Unlimited | 365 days             | 4,000 chars    | 16,000 tokens  |

The **context window** is how much of the conversation Summand can see at once — longer is better for multi-turn analysis sessions.

## Privacy

Summand's prompts and responses are processed through Anthropic's API. The full dataset is **not** sent — only summary statistics, column names, and the specific values needed to answer the question being asked. Anthropic is a listed subprocessor; see [Compliance](/enterprise/compliance) for the data-handling agreement.

If your organization needs to disable Summand entirely, contact [enterprise@summand.com](mailto:enterprise@summand.com) — Enterprise customers can scope Summand availability per-org.

## Troubleshooting

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Summand gave me wrong numbers">
    Sanity-check against the dataset's Overview tab or run the SQL Summand surfaces directly. If the numbers don't match, the issue is almost always Summand picking the wrong column. Reword the question with explicit column names and try again. If it still disagrees with what queries return, please report it via [support@summand.com](mailto:support@summand.com) — we treat ground-truth disagreements as bugs.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Summand refuses to make a chart">
    Usually means the requested chart doesn't make sense for the column types — e.g. a histogram of a free-text column. Summand will explain why; switching to a different visualization (counts, top-N) usually works.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="My free-tier question count reset early">
    Free-tier limits reset every Monday at 00:00 UTC. If your week-of-use spans a Sunday-to-Monday boundary, the count resets mid-session.
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>