Concepts, improved debugging, and new sharing options in Storytell

Louise Maniego

March 21, 2025

In this week’s engineering demo (March 21, 2025), our team shared updates on enhanced debugging tools for prompt execution, the upcoming Concepts feature, and a streamlined way to share Collections with a link.

Debugger tool for response tracking

Shelby Ramsey, our principal software engineer, shared updates to a new debugging tool that tracks each step involved in generating a response in Storytell. These enhancements provide a clearer view into each step of prompt execution—from selecting the LLM to final UI delivery.

It logs detailed timing for every part of the process—from selecting the LLM to search results to the final LLM output.
The tool helps explain delays (e.g., OpenAI taking 36 seconds to respond) and identifies where slowdowns are happening.
It also tracks data sent to and from the UI, helping explain issues like slow rendering or missing messages.
Plans are in place to add buffering on the backend to improve UI performance, especially with streaming LLM responses.

With this new tool, Storytell can pinpoint where delays happen—whether in LLM response times, data transfer to the UI, or elsewhere—making it easier to optimize user experience.

Additionally, Shelby noted plans to surface this data within Storytell’s support tool (Beacon), enabling customer support teams to answer “why did this happen?" without needing engineering intervention.

Exploring Concepts for a unified view of knowledge

Our Principal Software Engineer, Aaron Greenlee, shared continued progress on Storytell’s new UI, specifically its support for Concepts. Concepts provide users with a structured, entity-based view of their knowledge—whether it’s a customer, product, or project—by consolidating related data across chats, documents, meetings, and more.

Understanding Concepts in Storytell: A new way to organize and interact with knowledge

Storytell’s upcoming Concepts feature reimagines how you access and manage knowledge. Instead of searching through countless emails, documents, or chats, Concepts lets you view and interact with key topics—like a customer, product, or project—as a single, unified object. Think of it as turning messy information into an organized, dynamic dashboard you can chat with.

Here’s how it works and why it’s powerful.

The challenge: Knowledge is scattered

Today, your knowledge is likely spread across:

PowerPoint decks
PDFs and spreadsheets
Email threads
Zoom transcripts
Chat logs

If you’re trying to find all information about a customer like “BetaTech,” you’d have to open each file, scan for mentions, and piece together the story yourself. It’s time-consuming and error-prone.

The solution: Concepts create structure from chaos

A Concept is Storytell’s way of organizing all related information into one place.

Let’s take “Microsoft Cloud” as an example. Instead of manually searching for every reference, Storytell automatically extracts and aggregates all relevant data into a Concept. When you open that Concept, you’ll see:

Summary: A concise overview of what Microsoft Cloud is.
Key properties: Important attributes like services offered, revenue figures, etc.
Relationships: Links to other Concepts, like “Azure” or “LinkedIn.”
Alternative names: Other ways it’s referenced (e.g., “MS Cloud”).
References: Snippets from documents, transcripts, or emails that mention it.

You can also chat with a Concept directly, asking things like:

“What’s important about Microsoft Cloud in the latest earnings report?”

Storytell pulls from the Concept’s data and responds with the answer—without you needing to dig for it.

Concepts evolve over time

As you upload new files or have more conversations, Concepts update automatically. For example:

Upload Q1 sales data → the “BetaTech” Concept updates with new purchase details.
Add a Zoom call where “BetaTech” discusses concerns → the Concept’s risk status may change.

This means you always have an up-to-date view of what matters, without manual upkeep.

Push signal, not noise

You can also subscribe to notifications for specific Concepts. Let’s say you manage customer renewals and want to know if “BetaTech” becomes a churn risk. With Concepts:

You get notified only if something significant changes.
You avoid sifting through irrelevant updates.

You can manage preferences:

Get all updates.
Only get significant changes.
Snooze or disable notifications as needed.

Concepts let you:

Move from search to discovery: Instead of asking questions first, Storytell shows you what’s important before you even think to ask.
Reduce time spent tracking down information: Everything related to a Concept is already gathered for you.
React faster: Get notified of meaningful changes in real time.
Interact in a natural way: Just chat with a Concept to get insights.

Why “Concepts” and not just “Collections”?

Collections in Storytell are great for grouping assets. But Concepts go beyond Collections:

They’re automated: built from your data without manual setup.
They’re dynamic: constantly evolving as new data flows in.
They’re interactive: you can chat with them, subscribe to them, and use them to navigate your knowledge base.

Think of Concepts as living, breathing summaries of what matters most in your business.

Share Collections with a link—no invite required

Our senior frontend engineer, Andi Rosca, introduced a new sharing option for Collections: users can now share a Collection with anyone via a link—no need to invite by email. This makes it easier to collaborate and extends access to people outside of an organization.

Here’s how it works:

Generate a unique share link for any Collection.
Recipients can access the Collection via the link (sign-in required for new users).
Shared users are added to the Collection without needing a manual invite.
Creators can revoke links or remove users from the Collection at any time.

This opens up growth opportunities for Storytell by simplifying how people collaborate around shared knowledge.