What Timegravity Chat can do

Chat is the part of Timegravity most people use every day. It looks like a message box, which undersells it a little. This post walks through what it actually does, with a real example for each, so you can tell in advance whether it is worth your time.

Two speeds: Normal and Deep

Normal answers straight away. Deep takes longer, thinks in more steps, and is meant for work where a fast answer is a wrong answer. You choose before you send, and you can see which one you are in.

A real use: Normal for "summarise this email thread and tell me what I owe someone", Deep for "read these three quotations and tell me which one is actually cheapest once delivery and taxes are in".

The rule of thumb we use internally: if you would be annoyed to get the answer in five seconds because it clearly did not look properly, that is a Deep question.

It looks things up, and shows you where it looked

When a question needs current information, Chat searches the web and puts the sources under the reply. You can click them. They are the pages it actually used, not a decorative list.

If it did not need to search, no sources appear. That absence is information: it means the answer came from what the model already knew, and you can weigh it accordingly. A product that shows a sources panel on every reply teaches you to stop reading it.

A real use: "what are the current rules for carrying a power bank on a domestic flight in India" returns the answer with the pages it read, so you can check the one that matters before you pack.

You can point it at one page

If you already know the page, paste the link and ask your question about it. Chat reads that page and answers from it, rather than searching around it and hoping.

A real use: paste a long government circular and ask "does this apply to a business with fewer than ten employees", and get the answer with the part of the page it came from.

You can bring your files in

You can attach a PDF or an image and ask about it. A scanned document, a photograph of a printed page, a report someone sent you. Ask for a summary, ask a specific question, ask what changed between two versions.

A real use: attach a 40 page tender document and ask "what are the eligibility conditions and the last date", instead of reading all 40 pages to find two answers.

The arithmetic is actually calculated

When a question contains a calculation, the numbers are computed rather than guessed at by a model that is, underneath, predicting text. This matters more than it sounds. Language models are famously willing to produce a number that looks approximately right, and approximately right is useless in an invoice.

A real use: "if I buy at 4,20,000 and sell at 5,17,500 after 14 months, what is my gain and what is the percentage" gives you a number you can put in a spreadsheet.

It builds real files

Ask for a document and you get a document. Slides, a spreadsheet, a written report, a PDF. These are real files that open in the software you already use, not a preview of a file or a block of text you then have to reformat yourself.

A real use: "turn this conversation into a two page proposal I can send to a client, with the pricing table as a table" gives you the file, and you spend your time editing wording rather than building layout.

The same goes the other way. You can bring a file in, work on it in conversation, and take a file out at the end.

Every reply says what it cost

Under each answer there is a short line: what this reply cost, and your balance. It is deliberately small and deliberately always there.

We put it there because a running total you have to go looking for is a running total you will only look at when it is too late to change your behaviour. Seeing it under each reply tells you which kinds of question are expensive for you, while you can still do something with that knowledge.

It works in your language

Chat replies in the language you wrote in, across Tamil and 29 supported languages. Not a translation layer bolted on afterwards: you write in your language and the reply comes back in it, including when you switch mid-conversation.

A real use: write the question in Tamil, get the answer in Tamil, and ask for the exported document in English because that is what the recipient reads.

What it will not do

It will not invent a citation. If it could not find support for something, the reply says so instead of producing a plausible looking reference. You will occasionally get a shorter answer than you wanted because of this. We think that is the right trade, and it is the same principle behind everything in what Timegravity is.

It also will not quietly do something expensive on your behalf. Searching the web is a thing you can see happening and see the cost of.

Try it with a real question

The fastest way to find out whether Chat is useful to you is to take something on your list this week, paste in the actual constraints, and ask for the finished artefact rather than advice about it. Open Chat and give it the real thing. A test question gets you a test answer.