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You added an article, or a file, or a page of your site — and the AI still says it does not know. Almost every time, the answer is on Brand → Knowledge, in two columns: Status and Indexed. Between them they tell you whether your brand actually stored anything from that source, and it takes about ten seconds to check.
The five statuses
- Ready — stored and searchable. This is the one you want.
- Not indexed — nothing was stored from it, so the AI cannot answer from it at all. On screen: "Nothing was stored from this, so your AI cannot answer from it yet." Usually an empty file, or a page that could not be read.
- Reading… — we are still working through it. Wait a little and refresh.
- Failed — we could not read it. Hover the status to see why.
- Warning — read, but not cleanly. Hover for the reason.
You can filter the table by status, and if anything failed its last read, a warning appears when the page loads: "One or more website pages could not be read on their last try."
The Indexed column
This is how many searchable pieces the AI stored from that source. Longer sources become more pieces — one article is usually several. A dash means nothing was stored, which is the same bad news as "Not indexed".
Two things to know about the count on a knowledge base or documentation set. It counts only published articles and pages, and you can see exactly what was kept by opening See what was stored on the row.
The most common cause: it is still a draft
A draft is invisible to the AI. Publishing an article indexes it immediately — no chatbot required, no widget required, nothing to sync. Unpublishing removes it again just as quickly. If the Indexed number on a knowledge base is lower than the number of articles you think you wrote, some of them are drafts.
The second most common cause: the free allowance is full
Free accounts can hold 250 indexed items across the whole organisation — and so can accounts that bought individual modules rather than a plan, because a module buys features, not content volume. The line between the two halves of the Knowledge page shows where you stand — "212 of 250 indexed items used" — and at the cap, publishing new articles and adding new sources is paused until you remove something or upgrade. Remember that one article is usually several items, so 250 is not 250 articles.
Something that used to be a cause and no longer is
Swapping which knowledge base a brand shows, moving one to another brand, or taking one down used to leave the old content answering forever. People chased that bug for a long time. It is fixed: if the AI still quotes an article, that article is still published somewhere in this brand's knowledge — so look for it rather than assuming a ghost.
When a website page failed
Hover the Failed or Warning status for the reason. To try again, use Read again now on the row's actions. A page can only be re-read once every five minutes, and if one is already being read you will be told to wait for it to finish. For a sitemap, Pages found shows you what it actually discovered.
If everything says Ready and it still does not answer
Then the content reached the AI and the problem is somewhere else. Two things worth checking: is the AI agent switched on (Brand → Vex → Personality → General, Enable this agent), and is it set to decline rather than answer when it is unsure (Answers tab, When the AI Doesn't Know the Answer)? Beyond that, a question phrased very differently from your content is a knowledge gap, not a broken source.
Next step
Find the gaps that keep coming back, and what to write for them: Find knowledge gaps Vex couldn't answer. Adding something new: Add knowledge to your brand.