Guide

Ask your own pages
what you said.

Not a chatbot over uploaded PDFs. A question box over the documents you published, that answers in a few lines and puts a number next to every claim, and the number opens the page at the paragraph it came from.

Updated 2026-09-09 · by Hostus Team

The thing you cannot remember is never the document. It is the number inside it. What did we quote that client, what did we promise about maintenance, which week did the photographer fall through.

Search does not help, because you do not remember the words. This is the other shape of the question: ask it in a sentence, get an answer from your own documents, and check it in one click.

What it is, and what it deliberately is not

It is a question box over the pages you have hosted. It finds the documents that actually relate to the question, sends only those passages to the model, and answers in a few lines with a bracketed number after every statement. Click the number and the document opens at that section.

It is not a chat. There is no thread, no memory between questions, and no actions: it will not edit anything, send anything or decide anything. And when nothing in your documents relates to the question, it says so instead of writing something plausible. That refusal happens before the model is called at all.

The questions people actually ask

  • How much did we quote Vila Nova and over how many weeks? One line, a citation, and the proposal opens at the price section.
  • What risks were open last week? Two bullets, both citing the weekly report.
  • What is our maintenance rate outside a contract? The answer, from the client FAQ you wrote nine months ago and forgot.

The pattern: a number or a commitment that is written down somewhere in your own work, and that you need to say out loud correctly in the next ten minutes.

Why a citation on every line matters more than a longer answer

An answer you have to verify by hand costs more than looking it up yourself. So the answer is short on purpose and every claim carries the source, which is a link into the document at the right heading.

The rule the model works under is strict: answer only from the given passages, in the language of the question, and end every statement with its source number. If the passages do not contain the answer, say so.

Where to ask from

  • The Ask item in the sidebar, for anything.
  • The dashboard search box: type a question rather than keywords and Enter switches from searching to asking.
  • Inside a folder, where the question is limited to that folder's documents.
  • From the Map, where a point offers Ask about this and scopes the question to that one document.

Good to know before you switch

It answers from documents that are indexed, which happens within a few minutes of upload. A page uploaded a minute ago may not be in the answer yet.

Twenty questions a day on the free plan, two hundred on paid. Only you can ask about your own documents, because the session is the permission: there is no way to point it at someone else's pages.

And it is not a research assistant for material you upload to study. If your job is asking questions about PDFs you collected, a tool built for that is a better fit than this one.

Questions people ask

Can I ask questions about my own documents?

Yes. Ask on Hostus searches the pages you have hosted, answers in a few lines and cites the source of every claim, with the citation opening the document at that section.

Is it a chatbot?

No. Each question is independent, there is no thread and no memory between questions, and it takes no actions. It answers, cites, and stops.

What happens if nothing matches?

It says nothing in your documents seems to cover it, and suggests other words. That refusal happens before the model is called, so a question about an unrelated topic costs nothing.

Can other people ask about my documents?

No. The session is the permission, so you can only ask about documents you own or that were shared with you.

How many questions do I get?

Twenty a day on the free plan and two hundred on paid, with a short burst limit to keep automated hammering out.

The number is in there somewhere.

Host your pages, then ask them. Free plan, no card.