Decisions with options and risks

Big decisions get buried in long threads and meetings. Six months later, when someone asks “why did we choose that?”, the reasoning is gone. This walkthrough shows you how to lay out a real decision in Chat — its options, costs, and risks — weigh the trade-offs against your own documents, and walk away with a clean, auditable record of what you decided and why.

We’ll use a recurring example: an aging production line. You need to decide whether to replace the equipment, retrofit it, or outsource the work entirely. You have the operational history, vendor quotes, the latest financials, and your procurement policy on hand.

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What you’ll end up with

By the end you’ll have:

• A side-by-side comparison of all three options across the criteria that matter.
• A cost-benefit summary and a risk assessment, grounded in your own numbers.
• A clear recommendation with reasons — and the alternatives it was weighed against.
• An exported decision record (PDF or Markdown) you can drop into a decision log, attach to an approval, or hand to an auditor.

Every figure and trade-off traces back to a document you provided, so the record stands up to scrutiny later.

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Before you start

You’ll get a far better decision if Chat is working from your real numbers rather than general knowledge. The setup takes a few minutes once.

1. Gather the decision into one place

Create a Knowledge Collection for this decision and add the documents that describe the options and the constraints:

• Operational history of the equipment — uptime, maintenance logs, failure rates.
• Vendor quotes for replacement and retrofit.
• Recent financials — budget, depreciation, cost of downtime, cash position.
• Your procurement policy — approval thresholds, required steps, vendor rules.

Drag these straight into a conversation, or build the collection up front from Add Source → Upload. Supported file types include PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, and plain text, up to 100 MB per file. Chat reads each document, breaks it into searchable passages, and can cite the exact source behind every claim.

Include the policy, not just the numbers

Putting the procurement policy in the collection is what keeps the recommendation realistic. With it on hand, Chat can flag an option that would breach an approval threshold or skip a required step — before you take it to the people who’d notice. Keep the collection scoped to only this decision for tighter comparisons and a cleaner audit trail. For how to set one up, see Upload a file to work with.

2. Link the collection to your conversation

Open a new conversation and connect your collection so Chat consults it as it reasons. You have two easy paths:

• Use the Knowledge dropdown. Attach your collection to the conversation so Chat draws on it for every turn, or pick an Assistant that’s already wired to this knowledge. An Assistant bundles a system prompt, a persona, and one or more linked collections — so the right documents come along automatically every time. See Choosing an assistant.
• Reference documents inline. Type # in the message box to pull a specific document into a single turn. Selected documents appear as removable chips, so you can aim a question at exactly the quote or policy you mean.

Working privately or with a team

You can run this entire flow solo in a normal conversation, or in a shared conversation or channel so a group decides together against one shared record. Either way the steps are identical.

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The walkthrough

Step 1 — Lay out the decision and compare the options

Start broad. Describe the situation and ask Chat to compare your options. With the collection linked, it pulls the relevant numbers and policy as it reasons.

Try this prompt: “We need to decide what to do with our aging production line. The three options on the table are: replace the equipment, retrofit it, or outsource the work to a third party. Using our operational history, vendor quotes, financials, and procurement policy, compare these three options and explain the main trade-offs.”

What you’ll see. As Chat works, a short thinking view shows the steps it’s taking — understanding your intent, gathering information from your documents, building context, and composing the answer. The reply lays out each option with its strengths and weaknesses, and includes numbered citations that link back to the source document. Click any citation to see the exact passage it came from.

Choose how hard Chat works

Use the mode selector in the message box to match the depth to the stakes. For a high-stakes decision, Research or Thinking mode gives Chat room to gather from your documents and reason in multiple steps, rather than answering off the top.

Step 2 — Turn it into an option-comparison table

Prose is good for nuance; a table is good for deciding. Ask Chat to structure the comparison.

Try this prompt: “Now put that into a comparison table. Rows = replace, retrofit, outsource. Columns = upfront cost, ongoing cost, time to implement, expected lifespan, key risks, and fit with our procurement policy.”

What you’ll see. A clean table with one row per option and a column for each of your criteria — the at-a-glance view you can scan and share. Because you named the columns, the table reflects your decision criteria, not a generic template. The figures carry citations you can click to verify against the source.

Not quite the cut you wanted?

Under any answer you’ll find quick actions. Use Refine this to tweak the same table — add a column, change a metric — or Try different approach to have Chat restructure the comparison a different way, for example scoring each option 1–5 against your criteria instead of listing raw figures.

Step 3 — Add a cost-benefit and risk assessment

Now go deeper on the two questions every decision-maker asks: is it worth it? and what could go wrong?

Try this prompt: “Write a cost-benefit summary for each option using our financials, then a risk assessment that calls out the top three risks per option, how likely each is, and how we’d mitigate it. Flag anything that conflicts with our procurement policy.”

What you’ll see. A grounded cost-benefit narrative tied to the figures in your financials, followed by a structured risk assessment per option. Where a number or a constraint comes from one of your documents, you’ll see a citation — so you can prove that the “ongoing cost” figure came from the vendor quote, not from thin air.

When Chat is working from general knowledge

If you ask something your documents don’t cover, Chat tells you plainly — it’ll note that it’s answering from general knowledge rather than your sources. That honesty is the point: you always know which parts of the analysis are grounded in your numbers.

Step 4 — Compare two answers side by side

When the recommendation could go either way, you don’t have to guess which framing is better. Ask for the recommendation, then use Compare.

Try this prompt: “Based on everything above, recommend one option and explain why, including the main reason not to choose each of the others.”

What you’ll see. A recommendation with its reasoning. To pressure-test it, click Compare beneath the answer to put a second version side by side — for instance, one that optimizes for lowest total cost and one that optimizes for lowest risk. Seeing both framings next to each other makes the trade-off you’re actually making explicit, which is exactly what you want on the record.

If the recommendation surfaces lettered or numbered options (e.g. “A) Replace … B) Retrofit …”), Chat turns them into one-click choice buttons so you can drill into any branch without retyping.

Step 5 — Export the decision as an auditable record

Once you’re settled, capture the whole thing. Open the conversation menu and choose Export.

Format	Best for
PDF	A polished record to attach to an approval or file with an auditor
Markdown	Pasting into a wiki, decision log, or ticket
Plain text	Quick sharing where formatting doesn’t matter

The export carries the full thread — the options comparison, the cost-benefit and risk analysis, the recommendation, and the citations that ground each claim. That’s your decision record: not just what you decided, but the evidence and reasoning behind it. For the full set of options, see Export your work.

Keep the rationale handy without leaving Chat

Want the decision summary to live in Chat too? Save the key answer as a note so your team can find it later without digging back through the thread.

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You’re done

You took a messy, high-stakes choice and made it explicit: three options compared on your own criteria, costs and risks weighed against your real numbers, a recommendation that names its alternatives, and an exported record anyone can review. The next time someone asks “why did we do that?”, the answer is one document away.

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Where to go next

• Analyze data — ask deeper questions of the spreadsheets and financials behind a decision.
• Choosing an assistant — set up a reusable Assistant that always brings the right knowledge to the table.
• Save what you learn — keep decisions, findings, and rationale where your team can find them.
• Build evidence for audits — when the decision record needs to stand up to a formal review.