Chat & Ask

Ask is the interactive way into your data. Instead of reading every transcript, you put questions to a set of conversations and get answers grounded in what people actually said, with the sources cited so you can check them.

Treat it as a deep-dive, not a one-shot search:

1. Start broad - “What are the main themes?”
2. Zoom in - “What concerns came up about the bike lanes?”
3. Ask for evidence - “Show me the quotes.”

It’s best for comparing viewpoints, finding quotes, and testing a hunch.

One question bar#

Click Ask question in a project and Ask opens as a home for all your chats, with one input: Where would you like to start? Press Enter and your question becomes a new chat; typing in the same bar also filters your earlier chats, so it finds an old thread as easily as it starts a new one. A Templates menu inserts a saved prompt.

The assistant works in steps: it searches conversations, reads transcripts, and chains what it finds to answer harder questions (“find every conversation where someone disagreed with the proposal and tell me why”). While it works you see its progress step by step, and a Stop control replaces Send so you can halt a run that’s going the wrong way. Answers cite their sources by name - “Maria’s conversation”, “Maria’s transcript excerpt” - and each link jumps to the exact place in the transcript.

The classic chat: Specific Details#

Prefer to pick the conversations yourself? One click on Prefer the old chat? Start a Specific Details chat starts a classic chat: you choose the conversations (or select all), optionally filtering by tag, and answers come back in one pass with exact quotes and citations. Best when every answer should come from the same fixed set: one session, one cohort, exact wording. If you’re already viewing one conversation when you start, it’s selected for you.

The old Overview mode has been retired: its job - themes and patterns across all conversations - is covered by simply asking the assistant.

More than analysis#

Beyond answering questions, the assistant can:

• Check what’s live - ask “is anyone recording right now?” and it reads the same live status as the live monitor.
• Read earlier chats in the project (your colleagues’ private chats stay private).
• Answer “how do I” questions from this documentation, citing the page it used.
• Suggest settings changes - it never edits your project itself; every change arrives as a proposal you review and apply (or reject).
• Log a question with the dembrane team when you’re stuck - see getting help.
• Remember - it can save notes about your preferences and the project so the next chat starts smarter. You can see and remove everything it remembers: your own notes under Settings → Assistant, project notes in project settings, workspace notes in workspace settings. The assistant writes these notes; you can’t edit them, only remove them.

Hosts steer it with standing guidance too: the project context field, and a workspace-wide assistant context in workspace settings that reaches every project chat in the workspace.

Cited sources#

Every answer lists the conversations it drew on. Click through to read a source in full on its conversation page. If a claim matters, open the source and confirm it in the participant’s own words.

Templates & the prompt library#

You don’t have to write every prompt from scratch:

• Built-in templates live right in the chat - ready-made prompts for common tasks like summarising themes or surfacing disagreements.
• Save your own so a question your team asks every project is one click away.
• The prompt library has more, including patterns for large-scale, comparable analysis.

Templates keep analysis consistent across projects and colleagues.

What you need#

Ask needs the chat:use permission, so owner, admin, member and external can use it; observer collaborators are read-only (see roles & permissions).

The built-in analysis behind Ask is a Changemaker (€75/seat) and Guardian (€150/seat) feature, running on EU-hosted Gemini - chat that works out of the box. On Free it’s limited. On Innovator (€20/seat) you bring your own model instead: the chat screen becomes an integration where you connect ChatGPT or Claude over MCP (coming soon). See tiers & billing.

Chat vs library vs reports#

Three tools turn conversations into understanding, for different moments:

• Ask (this page) - interactive, question-by-question. Best for exploring and pulling specific answers with sources.
• Library & analysis - a standing, automatically extracted view of topics, aspects and quotes across all your conversations. Best for large datasets where you want the whole landscape laid out.
• Reports - a built, shareable document. Best when you’re ready to communicate, not just explore.

Most teams use all three: explore with Ask, see the landscape in the library, publish a report.

Related#

• Conversations & transcripts - the material Ask reads, and where cited sources point.
• Library & analysis - the standing, extracted view for large datasets.
• Reports - turn Ask findings into something you can share.
• Tiers & billing - Free limits, Innovator BYO, Changemaker+ built-in analysis.
• MCP & bring-your-own-LLM - connect your own model on Innovator (coming soon).
• dembrane next - preview features like the new Ask experience, not in production yet.
• For a host’s walkthrough, see chat & Ask for hosts.