Asking your datasheets and test reports questions: what a document assistant gets right and wrong

Ask “what is the maximum input voltage on this regulator?” of a 60 page datasheet and you can find the answer in a minute. Ask it across two hundred datasheets and a folder of test reports and you need help. A document assistant can give that help, but it fails in ways that are easy to miss.

How it works

The assistant splits your PDFs into chunks, turns each chunk into a vector, and when you ask a question it fetches the closest chunks and gives them to a language model to answer from. This is retrieval. The answer is only as good as the chunks found. If retrieval misses the page, the model will answer from general knowledge, and that answer may be about a different part.

What it gets right

Lookups that name a part and a parameter: pin functions, package options, recommended operating conditions, the register that sets a baud rate. It is also good at comparing two parts on a few parameters, and at finding which test report mentions a failure on a given step.

Cite the page, every time

A useful assistant shows the file name and page number beside each answer, ideally with the sentence or table row it used. Then you open page 14 and check in ten seconds. An answer without a source should be treated as a guess. We build the interface so the citation is part of the answer, not a link hidden in a footer.

Where it goes wrong

Tables. Datasheets put minimum, typical and maximum values in columns, often with conditions in a footnote. Plain text extraction can lose the column alignment, so a maximum is read as a typical. Extract tables as structured rows, and keep the header with each row.

Scanned PDFs. An old scanned datasheet or a signed test report has no text layer. It needs OCR first, typically at 300 dpi, and OCR confuses things like 0 and O, or 1 and l, in part numbers and values. Flag OCR text as lower confidence.

Units. µA and mA, kHz and MHz, V and mV. A one-prefix error is a thousand-fold error. Keep units attached to every number.

Part variants. Datasheets often cover a family with different limits per suffix. The assistant must say which variant a value belongs to.

Numbers it must not invent

We tell the assistant to quote numbers only from the retrieved text, and to say “not found in the documents” otherwise. We also check, in code, that each number in the answer appears in a cited chunk. If it does not, the answer is rejected before you see it. For anything that goes into a design or a customer report, a person still checks the source page.

What this does not fix

The assistant does not know if a datasheet is out of date, or if an errata sheet overrides it. Keep the document set current and name the revision.

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If your engineers lose time searching datasheets and test reports, we build micro-apps for electronics and manufacturing, including document assistants that cite the page, so book a discovery call.