Question 1

What is a brain?

Accepted Answer

A brain is a private knowledge base Coleous researches and assembles specifically for your topic. Instead of answering from generic training data, Coleous gathers credible sources, filters them for quality, and answers your questions directly from that verified material — with citations.

Question 2

What does the brain scale slider change?

Accepted Answer

Scale controls how deep the research goes. A higher scale runs more search queries and targets more sources, producing a more thorough brain — but it takes longer to build. Scale 5 is the balanced default; scale 1 is a quick scan, scale 10 is full deep research.

Question 3

What do the brain modes mean?

Accepted Answer

Auto lets Coleous pick the best source mix for your topic. General uses general web sources only, Full scholarly uses academic and peer-reviewed sources only, and Hybrid blends both. If you're not sure, Auto is recommended.

Question 4

What is the communicator intelligence level?

Accepted Answer

It controls how answers are explained — from plain language with no jargon (beginner) to full technical detail (expert). Unlike the other sliders, you can change it at any time: the next answer you get will use the new level.

Question 5

Why did I get "that question goes beyond this brain's sources"?

Accepted Answer

Every brain has a defined scope based on the topic it was built for. When a question reaches outside that scope, Coleous tells you instead of guessing. You can expand the brain with new research, or ask it to answer from what it already has.

Question 6

How do I expand a brain?

Accepted Answer

When a question goes out of scope, choose "Expand brain" — Coleous asks a couple of quick clarifying questions, researches new sources in about a minute, and re-asks your question against the expanded material. You can also expand manually anytime with "Expand with more sources".

Question 7

Where do the sources come from?

Accepted Answer

Coleous searches Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, arXiv, Europe PMC, and PubMed, plus trusted institutional archives like IEEE — over 800 million scholarly sources — alongside a curated general web search. Every source in your brain is one you can open and read yourself.

Question 8

Are my brains and chats private?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Each brain is built for you and isn't shared with other users. Chats are saved so you can pick up where you left off — you can turn auto-save off or clear your history anytime in Settings → Chat & Memory.

Create your account