Hinsley Documentation
Evidence Sources
Evidence sources control where Hinsley retrieves information for research, chat, and analytical workflows. You can select searches, document collections, and connected repositories. Documents you provide manually and previously collected evidence can also remain available as inputs.
Choose Sources for an Analysis
- New analysis: both the draft-assessment route and the skip-validation route lead to Choose evidence sources. Review the preselected sources, adjust the checkboxes, then click Start research.
- Existing analysis: open Evidence sources in the analysis sidebar, change the selection, and save.
- Standalone forecasting question: Hinsley uses the account's default sources. An account admin sets the defaults.
Questions inside an analysis inherit that analysis's evidence sources. Their source-selection page is read-only and links to the analysis's settings. Scenarios and decompositions also use the analysis's source settings. People with view access can inspect selections; changing them requires edit access.
An analysis needs at least one evidence source selected. An empty collection, an archived source, or an unavailable source does not cause Hinsley to search elsewhere. An unavailable source pauses retrieval through that source; other available selected sources can still be used.
Available Source Types
- Search: Hinsley Web Search, Hinsley News Search, and custom searches with domain or language restrictions.
- Account Evidence Library: documents uploaded to the account library. Select this source to allow retrieval from the library.
- Connected repositories: documents synced from a connected repository, such as Google Drive.
- Imported corpus: an available local collection of imported documents, with no external retrieval.
Personal Search Sources
Choose My Evidence Sources from your avatar menu, then Add source. You can also add a personal source from the source-selection screen. Give it a name, choose Web search or News search, and set at least one included domain, excluded domain, or supported result language.
Enter domain names one per line, without a URL scheme or path. Included domains also include their subdomains; excluded domains are omitted. With no included domains, searches can return results from any domain except those excluded. Web search also supports result-language filters; leaving these blank allows all languages. News search supports domain filters but does not offer a result-language filter.
Personal sources are visible to their owner in My Evidence Sources. Once selected on an analysis or question, collaborators can see them there. Only the owner can edit a personal source or add it to another selection. Editing it affects future research for every analysis and question where it is selected; the edit form lists affected work you can view and counts any you cannot.
Used by shows where a source is selected. Removing a source that is selected or has been used archives it and preserves its documents and history. A source that has never been selected or used can be deleted. Use Show archived sources and Unarchive to restore an archived personal source. If it was an analysis's or question's only available source, no new evidence is collected until a source becomes available or another is selected.
Account Sources and Defaults
Open your avatar menu and choose Evidence sources under Account Admin. Account admins can create search sources, copy an existing search as a new source, and edit custom sources. These sources are available to analysts throughout the account. Editing a shared source changes future research wherever it is selected.
The default-selection checkbox determines which sources are preselected for new analyses and standalone questions. Changing defaults leaves existing selections unchanged. Personal sources cannot be account defaults.
Hinsley-managed search sources have fixed names and search settings and cannot be archived. Admins can change whether they are selected by default. To use different search controls, create or copy a custom source.
Changing Sources and Keeping Evidence
When you deselect a source and save, Hinsley asks what to do with evidence already collected through it. The confirmation shows how many document connections can be removed.
- Keep collected evidence: stop future retrieval through the deselected sources and keep their collected documents available as inputs.
- Remove collected evidence: also remove document connections directly attributed only to the deselected sources. Manual inputs, documents also collected through a source that remains selected, and documents of unknown legacy origin stay. For an analysis, this applies to its own documents and those of its forecasting questions.
Removing collected evidence does not rewrite existing briefs, forecasts, scenarios, or conversations. Those outputs can still reflect the removed evidence, so changing sources does not create a fresh experimental history.
The source-selection page shows collected-document counts, manual inputs, and documents with unknown legacy origins. Shared documents count once in the total. Sources of retained evidence lists deselected sources whose documents remain available. Search Results can be filtered by evidence source, and research update summaries show Sources used for this update when available.
Linking Questions With Different Sources
Linking a question can import forecasts, rationales, and resolved outcomes influenced by other sources. When the questions have different source selections or search controls, Hinsley lists the differences and requires Import context with these source differences before saving the link. Removing a source later does not remove influence already imported through a linked question.