Quick fixes AG-T001
Chat is not always the right tool
Shared methods · A shared method; linked tool guides explain the exact steps.
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Some jobs fit a chat window; some need search, a file upload, an agent, or a spreadsheet. Matching job to mode is a two-question decision.
I'm describing things it could just read? Here's the quick fix ↓ — the why sits right below it.
Quick fix: Chat is not always the right tool
Instead of Describing your spreadsheet to the chat from memory, row by row.
Try Upload the file and ask the question — or, for a multi-step job across several files, hand it to an agent session instead of a conversation.
Pick the surface that can actually touch the thing you are working on.
Why this works
A chat answers from what is in the conversation. When the job involves a real artefact — a document, a dataset, current web information, a folder of files — the mode that can hold that artefact beats the mode where you describe it. Describing introduces your own transcription errors and caps the model at your summary; uploading or connecting gives it the real thing. The two questions that sort almost every case: does the answer need to become a change in the world, and does it touch a codebase?
When this applies
You are paraphrasing something the model could read directly, retyping data that exists as a file, or asking a chat to "keep track" of a multi-step job it cannot see.
Example
Instead of I have a CSV with about 200 rows of survey answers, mostly column D matters, it has comments like…
Try Attach the CSV: Group column D's comments into themes and count each theme. Show me three example comments per theme so I can check the grouping.
Template
The artefact is [a file / a website / my inbox / a folder]. Instead of describing it, I will [upload it / enable search / use an agent session] and ask: [the question].
Go deeper
The full decision is chat, Projects, Cowork or Code, with files and PDFs for what upload actually reads, web search for current facts, and what Cowork is for the multi-step, multi-file jobs a chat window cannot hold.
Improve next
- For current facts, make it search
For current facts, use a source-backed search.
- You are doing work it could structure
AI can probably structure this for you.
Something wrong with this page?
Say what you expected and what you got. That is usually the shortest route to a correction, and it goes on the public issue tracker so the fix is visible.