A reference for everything you can do inside a conversational AI session—interacting with responses, response actions, managing history, and configuration.
Conversational AI features
This page covers every capability available in a conversational AI session—how to interact with responses, control output, and manage your conversation history.
Prerequisites
Before you begin, make sure you have:
- Set up conversational AI for your tenant. See Set up conversational AI.
Response modes
Conversational AI answers in one of three response modes. The mode selector sits in the chat input, your choice carries across conversations until you change it, and a conversation keeps the mode it was started in.
- Thinking: the default. Optimized for depth—conversational AI reasons through the question in more steps before answering. Use it for multi-part questions, lineage and impact analysis, or anything that spans several assets.
- Flash: optimized for speed. Use it for quick lookups—what a table contains, who owns an asset, whether a dataset is certified.
- Auto: picks the mode per question. Auto answers on the fast path and moves to deeper reasoning when the question calls for it, so you don't have to judge each question yourself.
All three modes answer from your catalog metadata and return citations.
Response modes are enabled per tenant. If you don't see the mode selector in the chat input, contact Atlan support.
What applies in each mode
| Behavior | Flash | Thinking | Auto |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom instructions | Applied | Applied | Applied |
| Skills | Not applied | Applied | Applied only when the question takes the deeper path |
If a question depends on a skill—a repeatable, task-specific behavior your team has defined—ask it in Thinking mode. In Flash mode, conversational AI answers without that skill.
Think harder
When you're on Auto and an answer isn't deep enough, click Think harder below it. Conversational AI re-asks that same question on the advanced agent and adds the new answer as the next turn in the same conversation—the first answer is kept, so you can compare the two.
Think harder appears only on the most recent completed answer in a conversation on Auto. It doesn't appear on older turns, on answers that errored, or on answers you stopped.
Interact with responses
These features are available inside the chat input and within each response in the chat panel.
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@ mention an asset: Type
@followed by a table, column, dashboard, glossary term, or any catalog asset name to tag it directly in your question. This tells conversational AI exactly which asset you mean so it pulls the right metadata, lineage, and documentation rather than guessing. -
Citations: Every response includes source citations linking back to the actual assets in your Atlan catalog. Click any citation to open the original asset page and verify the information. To view citations, click the # icon on a response. Use the > icon to navigate between sources.
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Click to know more: When conversational AI mentions a table, column, or other catalog asset in its response, the asset name is clickable. Click it to open the sidebar with full details about that asset.
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Suggested questions: After each response, conversational AI suggests relevant follow-up questions based on your conversation. Click a suggestion to continue, or type your own. Context is preserved throughout the session.
Response actions
These controls appear at the bottom of each response in the chat panel.
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Copy: Click the copy icon at the bottom of any response to copy it to your clipboard. Useful for sharing answers in Slack, Jira, or a document.
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Retry: Click the retry icon to regenerate a response. Use this when you want a different angle or have refined what you're looking for. You can also rephrase your question and ask again for a more targeted result.
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Stop: Click the stop button in the typing box while a response is generating to stop it. Useful when the response is going in an unexpected direction or you want to ask a more focused follow-up.
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Feedback: Use the thumbs up or thumbs down icons at the bottom of each response to share feedback. When possible, leave a short comment explaining what was helpful or what missed the mark.
Artifacts
Conversational AI can answer with a file instead of a chat message. Reports, documents, diagrams, and skills open in a preview panel beside your conversation.
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Preview: Click View on an artifact card to open the artifact in the side panel.
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Edit with AI: Describe the changes you want and conversational AI generates a new version in place. The earlier card is marked Revised so you can tell which version is current.
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Download: Save the artifact to your machine in its original format.
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Create skills: Ask conversational AI to create a skill. It drafts the skill in the panel for you to review and save, and the skill is available in your next conversation.
For supported formats and the full workflow, see Artifacts in conversational AI.
Manage your conversations
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View past threads: All previous conversations are saved and accessible from the chat sidebar. Click the clock icon at the top of the chat panel to browse past threads and pick up where you left off.
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Rename a chat: Hover over any past thread, click the three-dot menu, and select Edit chat name to give it a meaningful name so you can find it later.
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Delete a chat: Hover over any past thread, click the three-dot menu, and select Delete to remove conversations you no longer need.
Configuration
- Custom instructions: An admin can set persistent preferences for how conversational AI responds across the organization—for example, to always prefer verified assets, to exclude an asset type, or to answer in a particular language. Custom instructions apply to every new conversation automatically. To configure them, see Customize conversational AI.