Retrieval
How Perch grounds an answer in your documents, your shared knowledge, and what it has learned about you.
Retrieval is how Perch finds the right material before it answers. Instead of relying on its training data, Perch pulls from sources you control, so the answer is grounded in your work rather than in the world in general.
Perch draws on three distinct sources. Each has a different purpose, and keeping them separate is what lets Perch stay accurate and traceable.
Your documents
This is the material in your workspace: the files you upload on the web, and the local folders you approve on the desktop app.
When you bring documents into Perch, they are broken into passages and indexed so Perch can find the relevant parts quickly. When you ask a question, Perch searches this index using both meaning and exact keywords, then pulls the passages that actually relate to your request. Those passages become the evidence behind the answer, and the source of the citations you see.
On the desktop, Perch also has direct tools to read and search a folder on demand, so it can work with files whether or not they have been indexed yet.
Curated knowledge
Curated knowledge is a separate, shared library: the templates, standards, and reference material your team chooses to add. It is not the same as your documents. Your documents are the case or the ledger in front of you; curated knowledge is the institutional context around it, such as a firm style guide or a standard audit procedure.
Keeping these separate matters. It means Perch can apply your team's standards without confusing them with the specific material of the task at hand.
What Perch has learned
The third source is memory: the durable facts and preferences Perch has picked up about you and your work. This is how Perch knows your role, your conventions, and the way you like things done, without you repeating it every session.
Memory is applied quietly. It shapes the answer in the background rather than appearing as a separate result.
Why three sources stay separate
A general assistant blends everything into one undifferentiated context. Perch keeps the three sources distinct on purpose:
- Your documents are the evidence for this specific task, and the source of citations.
- Curated knowledge is shared standards that apply across tasks.
- Memory is what is true about you over time.
Separating them is what makes an answer traceable. When Perch cites a claim, you can tell whether it came from the document in front of you, from a team standard, or from something Perch remembered, and you can check the right one.
Grounded, not guessed