Point Filamental at a folder of documents, or at a single document, and the AI you've connected reads it and builds a project from what it finds. Every person, organisation, idea and decision becomes a node, and the relationships between them become connectors.
Folder Exploration reads a whole folder. Document Exploration reads one document and looks for its themes, its arguments, how they connect and what each one comes down to, with a clear summary in each node's notes. Both read .md, .txt, .docx and .pdf files.
Your documents are only ever read. Nothing in them is moved or changed.
If you'd rather use an AI outside Filamental, such as Claude Code or Cowork, Build a Project from a Folder of Documents covers that route.
An AI connected in the AI window (see AI Connections & Prompting). It can be one of the hosted providers or a model running on your own computer. Your documents go straight from your computer to the provider you chose, which bills the reading to you. They never pass through us.
Choose Folder Exploration or Document Exploration from the New / Open / Import… window (see New, Open or Import), or from the + menu at the bottom of a project you already have open, as described below.
When it finishes, Filamental lays the new project out and shows a report: what was added, anything it couldn't read, and a Structure section describing what you've got. Each node has a Source property listing the documents it came from.
You choose, each time:
Pause at any point and it stops once the requests already in flight have come back. If your provider reports a problem, the run pauses by itself and shows you the provider's own words, and Resume tries again.
If you quit part way through, Filamental asks whether to carry on the next time you open that project. Continue picks up where it stopped and only re-reads what's left. Discard stops the run and keeps whatever was already added.
The same thing works inside an open project. Click + in the bottom bar and choose Insert a Folder Exploration or Insert a Document Exploration.
What the AI finds arrives as a separate structure, in one folder named after the source. Nothing already in your project is matched against, connected to or changed, and the classifications and connectors it proposes are additions only, so you keep everything you have. Filamental takes a backup first. The new nodes aren't laid out automatically (press 1 for Dark Energy if you want that), and you connect them to your own work by hand. Deleting that folder removes the import.
A project built from a folder usually sits inside it. If you later open that folder as a project in its own right, Filamental doesn't pull the generated nodes into it a second time. It shows a single bridge node instead, which takes you straight to the generated project.
A model on your own computer works here too, with two differences. Documents are read in smaller pieces, so it's slower. And a model that can't call tools may fail part by part, with its own message in the report.
It's a first draft, so expect to arrange it and tidy up afterwards.
Still stuck? Email [email protected].