Assistant

Assistant solves tasks across your project data. Context gives it capabilities, enabling it to understand your firm and project knowledge to deliver accurate, cited answers.

How Assistant Works

The Nomic agent searches, understands, and reasons over your project data to deliver accurate, cited answers. Powered by domain-specific models—Nomic Embeddings for semantic search and Parse models for file understanding—Assistant finds the information you need across files, drawings, and documentation. Give it context through integrations or direct uploads, and it will deliver answers grounded in your project data.

Assistant Controls

The input bar includes controls that adjust how Assistant processes your request:

• Model picker — Choose which model Assistant uses for the conversation. Different models offer different tradeoffs between speed and depth of reasoning. Sessions start on Auto, which lets Nomic pick the current default.
• Deep research — A toggle inside the model picker. Switch on to have Assistant investigate more thoroughly across your files before answering: slower, but more comprehensive and better sourced for questions that span many documents. The toggle appears once you select a specific model — it is hidden while the picker is on Auto.

AI usage limits

Limits depend on your plan:

• Individual — Usage is personal. Watch the balance in Settings → Billing. When included usage runs out, upgrade (trial) or buy more (paid). New turns pause; in-flight runs finish.
• Business / Enterprise — Your organization may enable per-user AI usage limits. Assistant can show warning banners as you approach your limit. If the limit is reached, new AI requests are blocked. Request an increase from Settings → Usage, contact your organization admin, or wait for the next billing-period reset.

Built-in skills

Assistant ships with procedures for the work AEC teams do most. There is nothing to switch on and no separate assistant to pick — it loads the right procedure from how you phrase the request, and tells you when a capability it needs is turned off.

Ask for	What Assistant does
A drawing review	Surveys the set, agrees scope with you, dispatches a sub-agent per issue class, and records verified findings with markups on the sheets — Drawing Reviews
A code or accessibility check	Retrieves the governing code for your jurisdiction and cites every requirement — Code Compliance, requires Codes Search
A submittal review	Cross-references the submittal against specs and drawings and returns a report with an approval recommendation — Automated Submittal Review
A BIM query	Queries the IFC model for elements, properties, materials, levels, and spaces, with clickable element citations — BIM Model Intelligence
A document or deck	Drafts one-pagers, reports, and slide decks as artifacts you can export
Research across the project	Searches and compares across everything in scope, with citations — Active Project Research

The same agent, tools, and models back a conversation and a workflow run. A workflow packages one of these jobs with fixed instructions, permanent context, and a file-request form so a team gets the same result every time — it does not unlock capability Assistant lacks in chat.

Rendered Code Blocks

Assistant can render some code blocks as previews directly in the conversation. This is useful when a visual or interactive result is easier to review than source code alone:

• Diagrams — Mermaid code blocks render as interactive diagrams.
• Math — LaTeX and TeX expressions render as formatted math.

HTML in a chat message stays as source. To get a running preview, ask for an HTML artifact instead — artifacts open in the artifact panel with Preview and Code tabs, where Preview runs in a sandboxed frame with no access to your Nomic session, browser storage, or the surrounding app. Previews work best when the HTML is self-contained, with inline styles and scripts rather than external dependencies.

Context

Assistant's capabilities come from the context it has access to. Context is scoped per session and can come from two places: the project a session belongs to, and files attached directly to the session.

Project Context

When you start a conversation from within a project, Assistant automatically has access to the files and folders attached to that project. This includes files you uploaded, and — on Business and Enterprise — files synced from external integrations like SharePoint, Egnyte, Autodesk Forma, and Bentley.

Attaching Files to a Session

Use the Add menu in the Assistant input bar to attach additional files to the current session:

• Existing files — Browse and select files already in Nomic, including files from connected integrations and previously uploaded documents
• New uploads — Upload files directly from your computer for immediate use in the conversation
• Images — Attach images to give Assistant visual context, useful for reviewing drawings, photos, or any visual material

Example prompts (with your data)

Assistant works best when your question clearly uses project files or attachments from this session. Without that context, answers tend to be generic and not grounded in your data—for example, broad firm-wide research across projects or code checks without the right libraries configured may not match what you see on your first day.

Example prompts that align with typical uploads—drawings, manuals, specs, and submittals:

• “Summarize the sheet notes and general notes on the PDFs I attached.”
• “What maintenance clearances or access requirements does this operations and maintenance manual call out for [equipment]?”
• “Find every mention of [topic or product] in the spec sections I uploaded.”
• “Compare these two detail sheets—list clashes, missing references, or inconsistent dimensions.”
• “Query this IFC model for wall types and fire rating properties.”

Bigger jobs work the same way—attach the files and ask. See Built-in skills for what Assistant produces for a drawing review, code check, submittal review, BIM query, or cross-project research.

Permissions

Assistant can only access files that you have permission to view. If a project or folder contains files you don't have access to, Assistant will not see them or know they exist. This applies to files synced from external integrations like SharePoint and Egnyte — Assistant respects the same permission boundaries as the source system.

Tool Calls

Assistant has access to a set of tool calls that enable it to interact with your project data and solve tasks. These tools allow Assistant to search, read, and navigate your files and integrations:

Assistant can also run exact text or regular-expression searches across attached files, folders, and markdown artifacts before reading a source in detail. These searches return line- or page-level matches, which helps Assistant pinpoint exact phrases and cite them precisely.

Tool Call	Description
Search Files	Finds relevant files and content across your project data using Nomic Embeddings for semantic search.
Read File	Reads a file — pages, sheets, or a whole document — using Parse models to gather context for solving tasks.
Render Page	Directly places page pixels into a vision language model for visual understanding of drawings and documents.
List Directory	Explores available files and directories to locate the right information needed to solve your task.
Artifacts	Creates, edits, and reads artifacts — structured outputs like documents, tables, and drawing reviews that appear alongside the conversation.

Specialized work brings more tools with it — locating geometry on a sheet, placing markups, verifying a finding with drawing judge, querying a BIM model, running code in a sandbox, dispatching sub-agents. You will see them named in the conversation as Assistant works. See Built-in skills for which job uses what.

Citations

Assistant grounds its answers in your project data and cites the sources it used. Citations appear as clickable references in Assistant's messages, linking back to the specific file and page where the information was found. This lets you verify answers directly against the original source material.

For Word, Markdown, and plain-text files, citations can jump directly to the quoted passage in the file viewer.

For BIM answers, element citations open the model viewer with the cited element selected so you can inspect its geometry, hierarchy, and properties.

When Assistant uses multiple files to answer a question, each claim is cited independently — so you can trace every part of the response back to its source.

Conversations

Past conversations are listed in the sidebar and can be reopened or continued at any time. Conversations started from within a project also appear on the project page.

Click the Search chats icon at the top of the sidebar to find previous conversations. In the main sidebar, search covers your visible non-project chats. On a project page, search is scoped to that project's sessions. Results are grouped by recency and open directly into the selected conversation.

Session owners can use the session actions menu to Move to Project. Choose a project where you have write access, or choose No Project to move a project conversation back to your main chat list. Moving a conversation keeps its history and moves any sub-agent chats with it; active chats and Workflow Builder chats cannot be moved until the run is finished.

Moving a conversation does not automatically change who can view it. If the conversation was shared with project members, that access is re-scoped to the new project, or removed when you move the conversation out of a project. Private conversations stay private, and organization link sharing stays unchanged. After moving a conversation into a project, use the Share dialog if you want project members to be able to view it.

Session Visibility

Use the session actions menu to set who can view a conversation:

• Private — Only you can view the session
• Anyone with the link (Individual plan) — Anyone signed in with the link can view the chat and its uploaded files
• Shared in Project (Business and Enterprise) — Project members can view the session (project sessions only)
• Shared in Org (Business and Enterprise) — Organization members with the link can view the session

Only the session owner can change visibility settings, rename, or delete the session.

To share a conversation, copy its link and send it to a teammate. Shared conversations are read-only, so recipients can view the full history but cannot edit or continue the session.

note

Changing session visibility does not automatically change file permissions. When a shared conversation includes private uploaded files that you own, the share dialog warns you and lets you share those uploaded files with the link recipients (Individual) or your organization (Business and Enterprise) from Manage. Files from connected systems keep their source permissions and cannot be changed from the share dialog.

Any descriptions, quotes, or excerpts from files that appear in Assistant's messages remain visible in the conversation history.