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Asking questions

How to ask Terno AI questions, use attachments and chat options, and work with answers.

Type a question in plain English and press Enter. Terno works out which data to use, writes and runs the queries, and replies with an answer.

  • Be specific about what and when: “Top 10 products by revenue last month” beats “show sales”.
  • Ask for the format you want: “…as a bar chart”, “…as a table”, or “…export as CSV”.
  • Name the source when you have several: “In Shopify, …” or “From the Postgres orders table, …”.
  • Follow up in the same chat. Terno remembers the conversation, so “now split it by country” works.

While it works, Terno shows a task list of its plan and ticks steps off as it goes. Click Show thinking to see the detail.

Terno answer with Show thinking, a final answer and a results table

Answers can include tables, charts, and files such as CSVs.

Bar chart in a Terno answer

Files Terno creates, such as CSV exports, appear as chips you can click to open or download.

Under each answer you’ll find these buttons:

Answer actions: copy, branch, view prompt, thumbs up, thumbs down, and Save as App Service
  • Copy the answer.
  • Branch the chat from this answer into a new chat.
  • View prompt: see the prompt Terno sent to the model.
  • Thumbs up / down to rate it. Your feedback helps us improve Terno.
  • Save as App Service to keep an analysis you’ll want to run again. See App Services.

When Terno finishes, it says Terno AI has completed its response and suggests follow-up questions. Click Regenerate Suggestions for new ones.

End of an answer with suggested follow-up questions

Click a suggestion to put it in the question box. Edit it if you like, then press Enter to send it.

A suggested follow-up placed in the question box, ready to send

Click + in the question box for more options:

The + menu with attachments, datasources, connectors, integrations and toggles
OptionWhat it does
Add photos & filesAttach files to your message, up to 200 MB each. Terno can read spreadsheets, PDFs, images, and more.
Add datasources / Connectors / IntegrationsConnect new data without leaving the chat.
Show ThinkingShow Terno’s reasoning as it works.
DBI AdminWorkspace admins only. Lets Terno manage data sources, update metadata such as descriptions, and write to the shared workspace memory. It never gets access to row-level data in this mode.
Fast modeNormal explores the schema and explains each step. Fast leans on what Terno already knows and skips the narration.