Documentation
Start typing to search…

Product knowledge

Build shared product context for AI-assisted workflows.

AI tools are great at producing output that sounds right. But without product context, they often get the details wrong—especially when your product uses terms that overlap with everyday language, or when internal shorthand doesn’t match customer-facing terminology.

Product knowledge is where you define that context in Atono. It allows you to generate and manage structured product concepts that can be used with AI tools across your workflows.


Glossary

The glossary builds a structured list of your product’s key concepts from documentation URLs you provide. It extracts high-confidence terms—such as feature names, workflows, screens, roles, and domain-specific language—and organizes them into a reusable reference.

There's one shared glossary per workspace. Rebuilding it updates the glossary for everyone in the workspace.

Each glossary entry may include:

  • Name — The fully spelled-out concept name. Each name is unique.
  • Description — A concise, plain-English definition written to be efficient for AI usage.
  • Synonyms — Alternate names or abbreviations found in your documentation.
  • Related concepts — Links to other glossary entries that are closely related.

The glossary gives AI tools consistent terminology and clearer context about how concepts in your product relate to one another.


View the glossary

If a glossary has already been built for your workspace, you can open it to browse existing concepts. The Glossary panel shows the total number of concepts and when the glossary was created.

  1. Open the Product knowledge page.
  2. In the Glossary panel, click View.

Search the glossary

Quickly locate a concept by searching for a keyword in its name or description.

  1. Click the search (magnifying glass) icon at the top of the glossary.
  2. Enter a search term. The glossary automatically updates to show matching concepts with the search term highlighted in its name or description.

Build the glossary

Building a glossary generates a structured list of product concepts for your workspace from the documentation URLs you provide.

  1. Open the Product knowledge page.
  2. Click Build glossary.
  3. Optionally, enter your Product name.
    • If your product name overlaps with a common word, adding it here helps reduce ambiguity during glossary generation.
  4. Paste one more more Documentation URLs.
    • We suggest help documentation, knowledge bases, or user or admin guides.
    • You can add multiple URLs if your documentation spans sections.
📘

Tip: Use root-level URLs for better coverage

Atono crawls your documentation starting from the URLs you provide. For best results, enter a root-level URL (parent path), not a single article page.

For example:

  • https://docs.example.com/docs/welcome-to-product may crawl only that page.
  • https://docs.example.com/docs is more likely to crawl that section and the pages beneath it.

Recommendation: Use the highest-level URL that represents the section you want included in your glossary.

  1. Click Build glossary to begin processing.

Building the glossary may take up to 15 or 20 minutes. Atono shows progress while it runs. You can navigate away—when the build completes or fails, Atono displays a notification with the result.


View sources and status

The Sources tab shows which documentation sources were used to generate your glossary, when the crawl started, and whether each source was successfully retrieved.

  1. Open the Product knowledge page.
  2. In the Glossary panel, click View.
  3. Click the Sources tab.
  4. Review the list of source URLs.
  5. Click a source row to expand it and view the individual URLs that were crawled.

Each source displays:

  • Source — The URL you entered.
  • Status — How many URLs were crawled and if there were any failures.
  • Created — When the glossary build started.

If a source fails, it shows a Failed status. Glossary generation can still succeed as long as most sources are retrieved successfully.


Export the glossary

When glossary entries exist, an Export option is available.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. Click the ellipsis icon (...) and select Export glossary.

Exports are in TSV (tab-separated values) format and include a header row with the following columns:

  • Name
  • Description
  • Synonyms
  • Related concepts

You can use this export as structured context in AI workflows—for example, when drafting stories, generating documentation, or planning code.


Use the glossary with AI tools

The exported glossary works as shared context when working with AI assistants. Some ways to use it:

  • Provide it to an AI tool before refining stories or drafting documentation.
  • Include it when generating acceptance criteria or reviewing edge cases.
  • Add it to prompts for AI coding assistants so that terminology and feature relationships are interpreted correctly.

Giving AI a structured glossary reduces ambiguity and helps keep terminology consistent across stories, documentation, and code.


When to rebuild the glossary

The glossary reflects the documentation it was generated from. If your product or docs change, rebuilding helps keep AI output aligned with your current terminology.

To rebuild, first delete your existing glossary, and then build a new one from updated sources.

Rebuild the glossary when:

  • Major features are added or renamed.
  • Core workflows change.
  • Terminology shifts between internal and customer-facing language.
  • Help documentation is significantly updated.

Manage the glossary

In addition to building the glossary automatically from documentation, you can manually add, edit, delete, and restore individual concepts to keep your glossary accurate as your product evolves.

Only Workspace Owners, Administrators, Product Managers, and users with glossary Owner or Contributor permissions can manage concepts. All other users have a read-only view.


Add a concept

Add a concept manually when a term is missing from the generated glossary or needs to be defined in a way that better reflects your product's usage.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. On the Concepts tab, click Add concept.
  3. Enter a Name and Description for the concept.
  4. Optionally, add one or more synonyms as a comma-separated list.
  5. Optionally, add any related concepts by selecting from existing glossary concepts. To remove a related concept, click the X on the concept pill.
  6. Click Add, or click Cancel or X to discard.

Edit a concept

Edit a concept to update its name, description, synonyms, or related concepts.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. On the Concepts tab, click the ellipsis icon (...) next to the name of the concept you want to edit.
  3. From the menu, select Edit.
  4. Modify the concept details.
  5. Click Save, or click Cancel or X to discard.

View a concept's version history

You can view the version history of individual concepts and restore a previous version if needed.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. On the Concepts tab, click the ellipsis icon (...) concept you want to review and select Edit.
  3. In the concept detail side panel, click Version history.

This opens a side panel with a list of all previous versions of the concept, with the most recent selected by default. Each version shows what changed compared to the version before it, with additions and deletions highlighted.

To close the concepts version history, click Hide version history.


Restore a previous version

Restoring a version of a concept creates a new version using the contents of the version you selected. All versions in between are preserved.

  1. In the concept's version history, click to view the version you want to restore.
  2. Click Restore version.
  3. In the Restore version dialog, click Restore to confirm, or Cancel or X to cancel.

The restored version becomes the current version of the concept and appears as an edit on the glossary History tab.


Delete a concept

Delete a concept to remove it from the glossary. Deleted concepts are moved to the Deleted concepts page, where they're excluded from future glossary refreshes. You can restore a deleted concept at any time.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. On the Concepts tab, click the ellipsis icon (...) next to the name of the concept you want to delete.
  3. From the menu, select Delete.
  4. In the Delete concept dialog, click Delete to confirm, or click X to cancel.

You can also delete a concept from within the edit view.


Restore a concept

Deleted concepts are saved on the Deleted concepts page. Concepts listed here are excluded from glossary refreshes. If someone tries to manually add a concept with the same name as a deleted concept, Atono will prompt them to restore it instead.

The Deleted concepts list includes each concept's name, which user deleted it (or ✦ AI if it was removed automatically during a glossary refresh), and when it was deleted.

  1. Open the glossary.
  2. Click the ellipses (...) icon next to the Glossary title.
  3. From the menu, select Deleted concepts.
  4. On the Deleted concepts page, click Restore next to the concept you want to add back.

Glossary permissions

Glossary permissions control who can manage concepts and perform actions like refreshing or deleting the glossary. All workspace users can view the glossary regardless of their permission level.


Glossary permission types

When you create the glossary, you automatically receive Owner permissions. As an owner, you can add or remove permissions for other users in your workspace.

  • Contributor: Glossary contributors can manually add, edit, delete, and restore glossary concepts.
  • Owner: Glossary owners have the same capabilities as contributors, but only they can refresh and delete the glossary.

Workspace Owners and Administrators and Product Managers have the same abilities as glossary owners, without explicitly requiring Owner permissions.


Grant glossary permissions

Only Workspace Owners, Administrators, Product Managers, and users with glossary Owner permission can assign permissions to other users.

  1. On the Glossary page, click the ellipsis (...) icon.
  2. From the menu, select Glossary permissions.
  3. In the Glossary permissions dialog, search for the users you want to grant permissions to.
  4. Choose whether to assign them as an Owner or Contributor.
  5. Click Add.
  6. Repeat as needed, then click Done when finished.

Change a user's permissions

Only Workspace Owners, Administrators, Product Managers, and users with glossary Owner permissions can change the permissions for other users. You can't modify your own permissions.

  1. On the glossary page, click the ellipsis (...) icon
  2. From the menu, select Glossary permissions.
  3. In the Glossary permissions dialog, modify the permission level in the Glossary permission column.
  4. Click Done.

Remove glossary permissions

Only Workspace Owners, Administrators, Product Managers, and users with glossary Owner permission can remove the permissions for other users. You can't modify your own permissions.

  1. On the Glossary page, click the ellipsis (...) icon.
  2. From the menu, select Glossary permissions.
  3. In the Glossary permissions dialog, hover over the user you want to remove and click the ellipsis (...) icon.
  4. From the menu, select Remove.

Delete the glossary

Deleting the glossary permanently removes all glossary concepts from your workspace. Delete it when you want to rebuild from updated documentation or different sources.

  1. Open the Product knowledge page.
  2. On the Glossary page, click the ellipsis (...) icon.
  3. Click Delete glossary.
  4. In the Delete glossary dialog, click Delete glossary to confirm, or click X to cancel.

After deleting the glossary, click Build glossary to generate a new one.

Updated about 4 hours ago