Select and classify source material
What you'll learn
Estimated time: 9 minutes
Before any tool touches a Brain, decide what belongs in it and count what you have. The Enhance Brain wizard inside the Aiqbee Platform accepts up to 20 files per run, each up to 50 MB, in PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, TXT, MD, CSV or image formats. A single well-scoped folder, a shared drive or a code repository routinely holds more than that, and that gap is the reason this course exists.
- State a Brain's purpose, audience and exclusions before opening any source folder.
- Classify files by sensitivity and set secrets, credentials and personal data aside before extraction starts.
- Use file count and file type as the trigger for choosing between the Enhance Brain wizard and this course's AI-tools path.
Video lesson
The animation counts a folder of source files past the wizard's 20-file limit, then splits the same folder into an included set and an excluded set.
Start with a boundary, not a folder
A Brain answers questions well when its scope is deliberate. Before opening a single file, write one sentence describing what the Brain is for, one sentence describing who will ask it questions, and a short list of what to leave out. "Customer onboarding knowledge for the support team, not sales scripts or pricing" rules out entire folders before you have read a word of them.
This boundary also decides which files are candidates at all. A repository's build output, a shared drive's personal drafts and a project folder's meeting recordings are rarely worth curating even when they are technically accessible.
Classify before you connect
Once the candidate folder is named, sort it into three piles: safe to extract, needs redaction, and excluded outright. Credentials, API keys, customer personal data and anything under a non-disclosure agreement belong in the excluded pile regardless of how useful the surrounding document is.
Ask your AI tool to help with this pass, but check its judgement. A prompt such as "list every file in this folder and flag any that likely contain credentials, personal data or confidential terms, without opening or quoting their contents yet" gives you a safe first inventory before any extraction begins.
- Safe to extract: methods, decisions, playbooks, retrospectives, public-facing documentation.
- Needs redaction: contracts with commercial terms, meeting notes naming individuals.
- Excluded outright: credentials, API keys, customer personal data, anything under a non-disclosure agreement.
Count your sources, then choose your route
Once the safe set is confirmed, count it. Twenty files or fewer, each under 50 MB, in a supported format, fits the Enhance Brain wizard inside the Aiqbee Platform directly, covered in the Aiqbee Platform course.
A whole directory, a shared drive with hundreds of files, or a code repository does not fit that wizard, because it has no directory-level ingestion and no way past the 20-file cap in a single run. That is exactly the situation this course is for: connect the Brain to an AI work tool or a coding agent over MCP, and let it read at the scale the wizard cannot.
Put it into practice
1. Prepare your practice material
Prepare a real folder or shared drive you are considering for a Brain, ideally one with more than 20 files. Copy a plain-text listing of its contents — file names, types and rough sizes are enough, taken from your file manager's list view or a directory command — so you can paste it as your practice scenario. You do not need to open any file's contents yet.
2. Choose your AI tool
Choose one tool for this exercise. The remaining steps will adapt to it.
3. Copy the prompt
Prompt you will use
Below is a text listing of the folder [name it]: file names, types and rough sizes. Without opening or quoting any file's contents, review the list and flag any items that likely contain credentials, personal data or confidential commercial terms, judging only by file name and type. Group the rest into candidate batches of 15 to 20 files each.
4. Open ChatGPT · Paste the prompt into a new chat
Open a new chat in ChatGPT and paste the copied prompt into the message box.
Open ChatGPT5. Add your practice material
Paste your prepared scenario beneath the prompt, separated by a heading such as “Practice scenario”.
6. Send, then review the result
Answer any clarifying questions. Before using the result, check it against your source and the completion checks below.
Before you continue
A one-sentence purpose, audience and exclusion list exists for the Brain.
Secrets, credentials and personal data are identified and set aside before extraction.
The chosen route (wizard or AI-tools path) matches the actual file count and format.
