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Managing Spaces

Spaces are knowledge bases that give the AI context. Create a distinct Space per context — "Work Project", "Brand Voice", "Personal Budget" — fill it with documents, and attach it to your commands.

How Spaces Provide Context​

When a Space is attached to a command, its content is included in the prompt sent to the AI. Each Space stores a collection of ingested files (its Space Data), and the extracted text from those files becomes the context the model sees.

How much text is sent depends on the Space's data mode:

  • Raw mode (the default) sends the original extracted text at full fidelity.
  • Compact mode sends AI-generated summaries instead, saving tokens at the cost of detail.

See Smart Compaction & Data Modes for the full picture of how modes, the token budget, and compaction interact.

Why Raw is the default: Retrieval (RAG) searches your documents' raw text, which Rephlo keeps for every Space — so a Space is searchable in either data mode. Raw is the default so that a whole-Space fallback can send the full text; if you'd rather save tokens, switch a Space to Compact (or override per command).

Creating a Space​

  1. Open the Dashboard → Spaces tab.
  2. Click New Space.
  3. Name — required, unique, max 100 characters (e.g., "Rephlo Docs").
  4. Description — optional context, max 500 characters.
  5. Emoji & Color — optionally pick an emoji icon and a hex color (#RRGGBB) for visual identification in the UI.
  6. Create.

Adding Data (Ingestion)​

Once a Space exists, feed it information.

  1. Open the Space details.
  2. Click Add Files, or drag-and-drop files into the window.
  3. Supported formats: PDF, DOCX, TXT, MD, and CSV.
  4. Processing: a progress bar shows Rephlo extracting ("ingesting") the text. Each file becomes a Space Data item with its extracted content and a calculated token count.

The Space file browser — add files/text, the file list with token counts and actions, and the Compact controls

Viewing Space Content​

You can review everything currently in a Space.

  • Inspect — click a file to see the exact text Rephlo extracted. Useful for confirming a PDF was read correctly.
  • Remove — delete obsolete files to keep the Space lean.

Each Space Data item tracks its own raw token count and, once compacted, its compact token count. The Space sums these into two running totals: the raw total and the compact total.

Space Settings​

Token Budget​

Each Space has a token budget capping how much content it can hold.

  • Default: 100,000 tokens. Range: 1,000 to 1,000,000.
  • Why it matters: attached Space content goes into the prompt, so larger Spaces cost more tokens per request.
  • Tracked per mode: the Space keeps a separate running total for raw content and for compact content, so you can see the size in either mode.
  • Recommendation: for most projects, 50,000-100,000 tokens is plenty.

Data Mode​

ModeWhat it sendsBest for
Raw (default)The original extracted text, unchangedPrecise formatting, code, structured data, and local search
CompactAI-generated summariesReducing token usage while preserving meaning

A command can override a Space's data mode for that command only — see per-command data mode override.

Space Maintenance​

Smart Compaction​

Compaction replaces a Space Data item's raw text with a dense AI-generated summary, preserving the meaning while shrinking the size. The original raw text is kept as a fallback.

  • Smart Compaction is opt-in (off by default). When you enable it on a Space, newly uploaded files are auto-compacted.
  • Strategies: Aggressive, Balanced (recommended), or Conservative — trading more token savings against more detail retained.
  • Manual compaction: you can also trigger compaction on demand from the Space view.

Note: Compact text is not indexed by the local RAG index. If a Space relies on local search, keep the items you want searchable in Raw mode.

Archive & Unarchive​

Spaces support soft-delete via archival.

  • Archive — hides the Space from active lists without deleting it (records the archive time). Archived Spaces are excluded from command execution and can't be linked to commands.
  • Unarchive — restores the Space to active status.

This keeps your workspace tidy while preserving Spaces for later.

Spaces and Commands (Many-to-Many)​

A Space can be linked to many commands, and a command can pull from many Spaces. One linked Space can be a command's default, used for quick execution without prompting. During a single command execution there is one active Space at a time; you can switch the active Space at runtime from the Dashboard or command runner.

For assigning multiple Spaces to a command, see Multi-Space Assignment.

Deleting a Space​

  • Go to the Spaces list and choose Delete.
  • Warning: this permanently removes the Space and its file references from Rephlo. The original files on your disk are not touched.

Next: Configure your AI engines in Managing Providers, or dig into Smart Compaction & Data Modes.