Welcome to EQUS X — Getting started

EQUS-X is a private AI workspace. You add documents, ask questions about them, and get answers that cite the files they came from. If you connect a Google account, it also pulls together the commitments sitting in your email and calendar.

Step 1 — Sign in and get your bearings

Where: Welcome email › Chat

Use the link in your welcome email. You'll land in Chat. Spend a moment on the rail down the left side: New chat, History, Hub, Storage, Support, Settings. That rail is on every screen and it's the whole app.

Step 2 — Decide what the AI can reach, before you add anything

Where: Settings › General

Go to Settings → General and look at AI Data Access Control. This is the switch that decides whether Chat can read the files you store. Turning it off doesn't delete anything — your documents sit in storage untouched and the AI simply can't open them.

Step 3 — Add your first document

Where: Chat › Add sources

1. In Chat, click Add sources in the right-hand panel.
2. Pick a file from your computer.
3. Grant access when prompted.
4. Wait for it to finish uploading and embedding. Embedding is what makes the document readable, and asking before it completes will get you a poor answer.

Choose something real rather than a test file. The app gets more useful the more it knows, and a document you actually care about will tell you far more about whether this works for you.

Step 4 — Ask a question you already know the answer to

Where: Chat › Cited sources

This is the one step people skip, and it's the most useful. Ask something you can verify, then check Cited sources underneath the answer to confirm it drew on the right file.

Doing this once, deliberately, tells you how much to trust the answers you can't check.

Step 5 — Connect Google

Where: Settings › Connectors

1. Go to Settings → Connectors and choose Google.
2. Work through the Google permission screens.
3. One screen warns that this isn't a verified Google application. Click Continue — we're partway through verification and that screen is expected for now.
4. Back on the Connectors tab, check the data access grants. Chat and Private Data Storage are separate switches, so you can let your mail inform the Hub without importing a single file.

Skip this step if you'd rather not connect an account. Chat and Storage work perfectly well without it — you just won't have a Hub.

Step 6 — Open the Hub and act on three things

Where: Hub

The Hub will have pulled together what it thinks matters. Some of it will be right and some of it won't. Take three items and act on them: pin one, dismiss one, mark one not relevant.

Those three actions are training data. This is the mechanism by which the Hub stops guessing and starts knowing.

Step 7 — Optional: bring your memory across

Where: Settings › Memory

If you've been using another AI assistant, Settings → Memory lets you carry over what it already knows about you. Copy the prompt, paste it into the other tool, paste the answer back. Two minutes, and it saves you re-explaining yourself.

Everything in the app lives behind the rail down the left side of the screen. It's on every page.

The chat screen

1. Navigation rail. Available on every screen.
2. Private Data Storage panel. A live view of your files, plus the Add sources button.
3. Source selection. Tick only the files this conversation should draw on.
4. Input bar. Type here, or use the controls at either end.
5. Cited sources. Fills in as answers arrive, showing which files were used.

How to store your data

The distinction matters because it means you can keep your documents in place while switching off the AI's ability to read them.