Upload files and export results

What is this?

You can give Pave Agent files to work from, and you can take results out of a conversation as a download.

There are two ways to give it a file, and they behave differently. Your file library holds files that stay available across every conversation. A file attached to a message is available in that conversation only. Choosing the wrong one is the most common reason a file is not there when you go looking for it.

Upload a file to your library

Use the library for anything you will need more than once: a survey file, your compensation philosophy, a board slide you keep referring back to. A good rule is to upload the context you would otherwise have to re-explain at the start of every session.

1. In the Pave Agent chat header, open Context.
2. Go to the Files tab.
3. Upload your file and give it a description. The description is how Pave Agent knows when the file is relevant, so make it specific.

Library files:

• Accept these formats: .csv, .md, .txt, .json, .parquet, .pdf, .png, .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, and .webp.
• Can be up to 100 MB each.
• Stay available across all your conversations.
• Are visible only to you. A file that has been shared across your company shows a Shared label next to its name.
• Can be deleted from the same Files tab.

Send a file with a single message

Use this for something you are asking about right now: a screenshot of a spreadsheet, a resume you want an offer evaluated against, a one-off PDF.

Attach the file directly to your message in the chat. Attachments:

• Accept PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, PDF, CSV, TXT, Markdown, and JSON. Parquet files can only go in your library.
• Can be up to 20 MB each.
• Are limited to five per message.
• Are available in that conversation only, not in your library and not in your other conversations.

If you will need the file again later, upload it to your library instead.

Export a result

Some results are too large to read in a conversation. When a result runs past roughly 200 rows, Pave Agent shows you a sample of it and includes a download link alongside it.

[Screenshot: A download card beneath a result in the Pave Agent conversation]

The download contains the full result set, not only the rows shown in the conversation. Downloads are CSV files.

To get one, ask for the data you want and be specific about the population, the columns, and the grouping:

"Create a CSV export of engineering ranges including job code, pay zone, range midpoint, market median for base salary, and average compa ratio."

A question that returns a short result is answered in the conversation on its own, with no download link, because the whole result already fits.

Find a past export

A download link inside a conversation expires. If you come back to an old conversation, the link in it may no longer work. The file itself is kept, so download it again from your library instead.

Past exports are kept in your file library:

1. Open Context from the chat header.
2. Go to the Files tab.
3. Switch the category to Generated.

Generated is a filter inside the Files tab rather than a separate place, so if you are looking for a download and only see the files you uploaded, check that filter.

Things to know

Give library files a clear description. Pave Agent decides whether to open a file based on its description, not by reading every file on every question. A file described as "survey data" is less likely to be used than one described as "Radford 2026 technology survey, US base salary by level."

Very large files may not be readable in full. The upload limit is 100 MB, but the practical ceiling for a file Pave Agent can read is lower, around 50 MB, and lower still for long documents. If a file is large, a focused extract works better than the whole thing.

A file attached to a message stays with that conversation. It does not move into your library, and it is not available in a new chat.

Where you put a data file changes what Pave Agent can do with it. A .csv, .json, or .parquet file in your library can be loaded into a table and queried, which is what makes analysis over a large file possible. The same file attached to a message is read as text in the conversation instead, so it works for a short file you want Pave Agent to look at, but not for a large one you want analyzed row by row. Put survey files and employee extracts in your library.

Results come out as data files. Charts, formatted documents, slides, and PDF reports are not available.

Pave Agent does not change your compensation data. Exporting a result does not write anything back into Pave. See the article on what data Pave Agent can see.