> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.theabot.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How Thea finds passages and builds Discord answers

> Thea searches only your sources, scores confidence from 0 to 1, and posts a cited thread — or hands off instead of guessing.

When a member asks a question in a channel Thea watches, Thea searches the knowledge you connected, scores the match, and either posts a threaded reply with citations or refuses to guess.

## How an answer is built

<Steps>
  <Step title="A member asks a question">
    Someone writes in a watched channel, @mentions Thea, or uses `/ask`. Thea also answers the first question in a ticket it created (and in Ticket Tool–style channels if you enabled that).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Thea searches your passages">
    Only passages indexed for this server are searched. Nothing from another community is used.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Confidence is scored">
    The draft gets a score between 0 and 1 before anything is posted. See [Confidence and escalation](/answering/confidence-and-escalation).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Reply in a thread, with citations">
    If the score meets your threshold, Thea opens a thread on the original message and posts the answer with numbered citations (for example **\[1] Docs · Authentication**). Members can mark it helpful or not helpful, and can press **Get a human** if you enabled that button.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Below threshold — no guess">
    Thea tells the member it could not ground a reliable answer. If escalation is on, it offers a handoff that pings your support role. It does not invent a policy from general knowledge.
  </Step>
</Steps>

Near-duplicate questions can link to a recent answer instead of generating a new one. Those redirects do not count against your monthly quota. See [Answering settings](/answering/settings).

## Grounded by design

* **Exact source citations.** Each answer links to the passage Thea retrieved, not just the document.
* **Server isolation.** Your index never appears in another server's answers.
* **Honest gaps.** If the sources do not cover the question well enough, Thea says so.

<Note>
  Thea never answers from the public internet or its own training data. Extra instructions under **Settings → General** can set tone; they cannot override grounding.
</Note>

## What members see

* The answer, in the asker's language if you enabled that
* Numbered citations back to your sources
* Helpful / not helpful buttons
* An optional **Get a human** button

If a human (not Thea) replies in that thread, Thea steps back and stops contributing.

Playground questions use the same pipeline and do not post to Discord. See [Playground](/answering/playground).