Knowledges

What is Knowledges?

Knowledges is Castrel's operational knowledge management system that stores your team's operational experience, troubleshooting guides, and system documentation in a structured format. This knowledge is automatically retrieved and referenced by Castrel AI, helping it better understand your system environment and provide more accurate diagnostics and recommendations.

Unlike traditional documentation, Knowledges uses a Trigger mechanism that activates knowledge at the right moment. For example, when the AI analyzes an alert for a specific service, knowledge bound to that service is automatically included in the context.

How it Works

Knowledge Types

Castrel supports two knowledge types:

Trigger Conditions

Trigger conditions determine when knowledge is referenced by the AI. Choosing the right trigger ensures knowledge is activated in the most relevant scenarios:

Creating Knowledge

Manual Creation

In the Castrel console, navigate to Settings > Knowledges and click Create Knowledge:

1. Fill in Basic Information
   • Knowledge ID: Unique identifier, use meaningful names (e.g., payment-gateway-architecture)
   • Name: Knowledge name
   • Type: Choose Simple or Document
   • Description: Brief description of the content and purpose
2. Configure Trigger Conditions
   • Select the trigger type
   • Configure the associated resource (Application, Service, Infrastructure, etc.)
3. Write Content
   • Simple type: Enter plain text directly
   • Document type: Use the Markdown editor
4. Add Labels (Optional)
   • Use key-value labels to organize knowledge
   • Enables filtering and retrieval later

Creating from Conversations

When Castrel AI generates valuable analysis reports during troubleshooting, you can save them as knowledge with one click:

1. After the AI completes its analysis, a Save as Knowledge button appears
2. Click to automatically extract key information
3. Confirm and add trigger conditions to save

This approach is ideal for capturing troubleshooting experience, turning your team's incident history into reusable knowledge assets.

Creating from Resource Detail Pages

In the detail pages for Applications, Services, Infrastructure, and Connectors, you'll find a Related Knowledge tab:

• View all knowledge associated with the current resource
• Create new knowledge that's automatically bound to the current resource

Knowledge in Action

When properly configured, knowledge automatically takes effect in these scenarios:

Alert Analysis

User: Analyze the high latency alert for mysql-prod-01

AI: I've retrieved knowledge documents related to mysql-prod-01...
    Based on the "Database High Latency Analysis Report", similar issues
    are typically caused by:
    1. Missing indexes leading to full table scans
    2. Slow query backlog
    3. Connection pool misconfiguration

    Let me start investigating...

Incident Investigation

When diagnosing incidents, the AI automatically references:

• Knowledge bound to the affected service
• Knowledge bound to related infrastructure
• Knowledge matching alert patterns
• Always-active general knowledge

Q&A Queries

User: What's the timeout threshold for our payment service?

AI: According to the "Payment Gateway Architecture" document,
    the payment service timeout settings are:
    - Default timeout: 30s
    - Retry attempts: 3
    - Concurrency limit: 1000 req/s

Tips for Better Results

When to Use Knowledges

Ideal For:

• Service architecture and configuration documentation
• Troubleshooting guides and runbooks
• System best practices and operational standards
• Alert response guidelines
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
• Change history and lessons learned

Not Ideal For:

• Real-time data that needs live updates (use Connectors instead)
• Temporary debugging information
• Unverified speculation or guesses

Common Questions