Chat & Ask

Ask is the interactive way into your data. Instead of reading every transcript, you put questions to a set of conversations and get answers grounded in what people actually said, with the sources cited so you can check them.

Treat it as a deep-dive, not a one-shot search:

1. Start broad - “What are the main themes?”
2. Zoom in - “What concerns came up about the bike lanes?”
3. Ask for evidence - “Show me the quotes.”

It’s best for comparing viewpoints, finding quotes, and testing a hunch.

Modes#

Click Ask question in a project, then choose a mode - it sets how dembrane reads your conversations:

• Overview (beta) - reads across all conversations in the project for themes and patterns. Best for open-ended exploration; it paraphrases rather than quoting.
• Specific Details - you pick the conversations (or select all), optionally filtering by tag, and answers come back with exact quotes and citations. Best when you want precision: one session, one cohort, exact wording. If you’re already viewing one conversation when you start, it’s selected for you.
• Agentic (dembrane next only) - multi-step analysis with live tool execution: it can search across conversations, fetch transcripts, and chain steps to answer harder questions. A preview feature, not in production yet.

Specific Details is the usual move once a project gets large and you want precision over breadth.

Cited sources#

Every answer lists the conversations it drew on. Click through to read a source in full on its conversation page. If a claim matters, open the source and confirm it in the participant’s own words.

Templates & the prompt library#

You don’t have to write every prompt from scratch:

• Built-in templates live right in the chat - ready-made prompts for common tasks like summarising themes or surfacing disagreements.
• Save your own so a question your team asks every project is one click away.
• The prompt library has more, including patterns for large-scale, comparable analysis.

Templates keep analysis consistent across projects and colleagues.

What you need#

Ask needs the chat:use permission, so owner, admin, member and external can use it; observer collaborators are read-only (see roles & permissions).

The built-in analysis behind Ask is a Changemaker (€75/seat) and Guardian (€150/seat) feature, running on EU-hosted Gemini - chat that works out of the box. On Free it’s limited. On Innovator (€20/seat) you bring your own model instead: the chat screen becomes an integration where you connect ChatGPT or Claude over MCP (coming soon). See tiers & billing.

Chat vs library vs reports#

Three tools turn conversations into understanding, for different moments:

• Ask (this page) - interactive, question-by-question. Best for exploring and pulling specific answers with sources.
• Library & analysis - a standing, automatically extracted view of topics, aspects and quotes across all your conversations. Best for large datasets where you want the whole landscape laid out.
• Reports - a built, shareable document. Best when you’re ready to communicate, not just explore.

Most teams use all three: explore with Ask, see the landscape in the library, publish a report.

Related#

• Conversations & transcripts - the material Ask reads, and where cited sources point.
• Library & analysis - the standing, extracted view for large datasets.
• Reports - turn Ask findings into something you can share.
• Tiers & billing - Free limits, Innovator BYO, Changemaker+ built-in analysis.
• MCP & bring-your-own-LLM - connect your own model on Innovator (coming soon).
• dembrane next - preview features like agentic mode, not in production yet.
• For a host’s walkthrough, see chat & Ask for hosts.