What does the "File Search" button do in normal chat?

[jasongilman]

I've upgraded to v0.7.9 and there's now a "File Search" option in the main chat interface that I don't understand. I looked through the documentation and couldn't figure out what it does other than "Similar to the webSearch option but controls file search (RAG API usage via tool)"

I tried enabling it and asking a question like "Which file describes an upcoming event on X?" and it responds "I don't have access to your files or any information about what documents you have." even though I previously attached files on events. The existing behavior of clicking a previously attached file continues to work and asking about it continues to work. It seems like it's supposed to work like the file search in Agents but it doesn't seem to work. Is it triggered only based on the file names and not file content?

[isaacraja]

For me the file search option works in a regular chat window - But if I use an agent and upload the file via the file search option, it doesn't recognize the file i uploaded in the agent chat. It can access the files uploaded via file_search in the agent builder though.

[surak]

It seems that it does not work on temporary chats either

[jasongilman]

I forgot to come back to this question after I got a better understanding of what it does. When it's enabled it allows you to attach files for indexing and searching. If you don't have any files selected in the current conversation and ask a question then it doesn't really do anything. It's only going to answer questions on files you've just uploaded or have selected existing files.