Your AI agent is only as useful as its source material

A customer asks whether installation is included. Your homepage says “full service.” A two-year-old PDF lists an installation fee. Your team knows the current policy, but neither page explains it. Giving an AI agent both documents does not settle the question. It gives the agent a contradiction.

For a company launching a customer agent in September 2026, cleaning up a handful of important facts is often a more useful first task than importing every document available.

Why context matters#

In its September 2024 experiments, Anthropic reported that adding contextual information to both semantic and keyword retrieval reduced its top-20 retrieval failure rate from 5.7% to 2.9%. That is a 49% relative reduction, not a 49 percentage-point increase in answer accuracy. The result concerns finding relevant material in Anthropic's evaluation, not Make Agent Fast performance. Read the research and methodology.

The practical lesson we draw from it: a passage needs enough context to stand on its own. “Included for annual customers in Korea from September 1” is more useful than “Included.”

From a company fact to a customer answer

1. 01 →Define the factName the service, region, effective date, and exceptions.
2. 02 →Keep one current sourceReview the wording and remove superseded versions.
3. 03Test the questionAsk directly, paraphrase it, then test an exception.

Build a small source of truth#

Start with the subjects your customers ask about most: prices, eligibility, hours, delivery, cancellation, and contacting a person. Give each subject a clear heading and a complete answer.

For example, an illustrative installation policy might read: “On-site installation is included with the annual Business package within Seoul. Monthly packages and visits outside Seoul require a separate quote. Effective September 1, 2026.” That single paragraph identifies the offer, boundary, location, and date. These are example terms, not a Make Agent Fast offer.

Assign someone to own each changing fact. When prices change, replace the old source instead of leaving two versions active. A historical brochure can be useful to your team without belonging in the agent's current answer material.

Put it into Make Agent Fast#

Use Knowledge sources for approved notes, public pages, and supported files. Check that an import produced readable content. A scanned PDF without selectable text needs conversion before upload; an attractive document is not necessarily an extractable one.

For fetched sources, choose an appropriate refresh schedule and check the last refresh result. Pasted notes and uploads are snapshots, so give them an explicit review owner.

Then ask three versions of the installation question: “Is installation included?”, “Will someone set it up for us?”, and “Can you install outside Seoul for free?” The last question tests whether the agent respects the boundary instead of extending the offer.

Make unanswered questions useful#

An unanswered question is a maintenance signal. Check whether the fact is missing, ambiguous, outdated, or genuinely requires a person's judgment. Add an approved answer only when your company can stand behind it. Otherwise, keep a clear route to a person.

Before your next launch, choose five frequently asked questions and find the exact source for each. If your team cannot locate an unambiguous answer, improve the source before adjusting the agent's personality.