# Files & Artifacts

Treasure AI Studio treats files as the working material of a conversation, not as attachments bolted onto it. You upload a CSV and the AI reads it; the AI writes a deck and it appears in the chat as a card you can open; both files land in the same server-side [work folder](/products/ai-studio/concepts/work-folders), where they outlive the conversation that produced them. That closes the loop between a question and a deliverable — an analyst goes from raw export to a formatted report without leaving the thread, and a marketer gets a presentation they can send rather than a description of one.

Everything happens server-side. The AI reads and writes files inside a managed sandbox and never touches your local filesystem; uploads and downloads are the only two moments a file crosses between your device and Studio, and you initiate both. See [Security Overview](/products/ai-studio/security).

## How Files Move Through Studio

Files enter Studio three ways, and all three end up in the same place:

| Path In  | What Happens  |
|  --- | --- |
| **Attach in the chat composer** | The file uploads to the `uploads/` directory of the chat's work folder, and its path is appended to your message so the AI can read it. See [Uploading Files](/products/ai-studio/files/file-upload-download#uploading-files). |
| **Upload from a work folder page** | The file lands in whichever folder you are viewing — the direct way to place a dataset before you start a chat. |
| **The AI writes it** | The AI creates the file inside the sandbox and calls a tool to surface it, which is what makes a file card appear in the chat stream. See [AI-Generated Files](/products/ai-studio/files/artifacts). |


Once a file exists, you open it in a built-in [viewer](/products/ai-studio/files/file-viewers), organize it from the sidebar file tree or the work folder page, and download it when you want a copy on your device.

## Where Files Live

A file belongs to a **work folder**, not to a chat. Every chat inside a work folder reads and writes the same file space, so the reports, datasets, and images produced across many conversations accumulate in one place — and stay there after the chats that made them are deleted or expire.

A chat started with no work folder is the exception: it keeps its own private file space, which no file browser can show you, and those files are deleted with the chat. This is why the practical rule is **if you want to keep it, keep it in a work folder**. See [File Retention & Deletion](/products/ai-studio/files/file-upload-download#file-retention--deletion).

## The Artifacts Panel

The panel on the right side of Studio is a **viewer**, not a file manager. Each file you open becomes a tab in it, and its header carries the actions for the file in the active tab: download, delete, and maximize. Studio keeps a separate set of tabs for each chat and work folder, so switching conversations does not mix up what you had open.

Browsing and organizing happen elsewhere — in the sidebar file tree and on the work folder page. Keeping those apart is deliberate: the panel shows you one file at a time next to the conversation about it, while the work folder page shows you everything the folder holds.

Note
Every viewer in Studio is read-only. You change a file by asking the AI in chat, not by editing it in the panel.

## In This Section

File Upload & Download
Get data in and results out: attaching files, uploading into a work folder, downloading, and organizing a folder's files.

File Viewers
Reference for every built-in viewer — which extensions each one renders, what controls it offers, and what it cannot do.

AI-Generated Files
Ask the AI for a deck, report, spreadsheet, or PDF — how to phrase the request, and how the file reaches you.

Image Generation
Create and edit images from a plain-language description, and control their size, quality, and format.

## Frequently Asked Questions

### Where Do the Files I Upload Actually Go?

Files attached in the chat composer are saved to an `uploads/` directory that Studio creates on the first upload. For a chat in a work folder, that is the work folder's own `uploads/`, so the file appears in the **Uploads** section of the work folder page and in the sidebar file tree. For a chat with no work folder, `uploads/` belongs to that chat alone. Uploading from a work folder page instead puts the file directly in the folder you are viewing, bypassing `uploads/`. The maximum upload size is **100 MB per file**. See [Where Attachments Are Saved](/products/ai-studio/files/file-upload-download#where-attachments-are-saved).

### Why Didn't a File the AI Created Appear in the Chat?

A file card appears only when the AI explicitly surfaces the file. It is instructed to surface one main deliverable and skip intermediate files, configs, and dependencies — so a multi-file output such as an HTML report with its scripts shows one card, for the entry point. That judgement can go wrong: a file you regard as the deliverable may be treated as a working file and get no card at all. The file still exists either way — look for it in the sidebar file tree or on the work folder page, or ask the AI which files it wrote. See [How a File Reaches You](/products/ai-studio/files/artifacts#how-a-file-reaches-you).

### Which File Types Can Studio Preview?

Treasure AI Studio renders PDFs, Excel workbooks, CSV and TSV data, PowerPoint decks, Word documents, images, Markdown, HTML, Mermaid diagrams, journey definitions, and source code in more than twenty languages. Anything else — including `.txt` and `.log` — falls back to a plain text viewer, so no file is ever unopenable. The complete extension-to-viewer mapping is in [File Viewers](/products/ai-studio/files/file-viewers).

### Are My Files Deleted When a Chat Expires?

Only files that belong to a chat with no work folder. Chats expire after the retention period an administrator configures (14, 28, or 60 days; the default is 28), and a chat with no work folder takes its files with it. Files in a work folder are exempt — they belong to the folder, and they survive the deletion or expiry of every chat that touched them. See [Chat Data Retention](/products/ai-studio/security/data-retention).

### Can I Edit a File Inside Studio?

No. Studio's viewers are read-only by design, and there is no in-app editor for any format. To change a file, ask the AI in chat — "add a slide for APAC results", "recalculate column D" — and it rewrites the file in place. To edit by hand, download the file and open it in the application that owns the format.

## Next Steps

- [Work Folders](/products/ai-studio/concepts/work-folders) — The container that owns a file space and shares it across chats
- [AI Chat Interface](/products/ai-studio/chat/chat) — Attaching files and referencing them in a conversation
- [Charting a Result](/products/ai-studio/query/query-results#charting-a-result) — Asking for a chart rather than a document
- [Chat Data Retention](/products/ai-studio/security/data-retention) — How long chats and their files are kept