---
title: Inside the Knowledge Layer
description: "How NetworkOS knows what it knows: Your Data (Records and Files) plus External Data Sources, working together behind every answer your team gets."
---
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1. [NetworkOS](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/?hsLang=en)
2. [The Knowledge Layer](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/the-knowledge-layer?hsLang=en)
# Inside the Knowledge Layer
## What your Workspace knows, and where that knowledge comes from
### **The two layers your Workspace reasons against**
Everything NetworkOS does for you — every answer, every research run, every match — is grounded in data. Your **Workspace** — the secure, private environment that holds your team's data, intelligence, and work — reasons against two distinct layers:
- **Your Data** — the proprietary layer: your people, your organizations, your events, your files, your context. It belongs to your Workspace, never leaves it, and is what makes the intelligence specific to you instead of generic.
- **External Data Sources** — the curated layer Collaboration.Ai provides: government datasets, a shared organization library, and enrichment that fills in public facts. Research your team would otherwise do by hand, done once and available to every question you ask.
The two layers work together. Ask Terminal about a vendor, and it combines what your team knows — your Records, your Files, your past work — with what the platform knows — registrations, awards, contracts, curated context. Every answer draws on both, and every answer cites which layer, and which specific source, it came from.
### **Your Data, in brief**
Your data lives in your Workspace as two distinct things:
- **Records** — the people, organizations, and events your team tracks.
- **Files** — anything your team brings in as context: reports, rosters, capability statements, briefs.
Work your team produces from this layer — a report, a summary — is saved as an **Artifact**, part of the same knowledge layer going forward.
→ [*Records*](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/records?hsLang=en) · [*Files*](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/files?hsLang=en) · [*Artifacts*](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/artifacts?hsLang=en)
### **External Data Sources, in brief**
Collaboration.Ai's curated layer arrives three ways:
- **Data Packs** — external datasets Terminal draws on as ambient knowledge.
- **Platform Organization Library** — a shared library of organization records extending your Network.
- **Enrichment** — a background service that fills in public facts on your Records.
→ [*External Data Sources*](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/external-data-sources?hsLang=en)
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- [The Knowledge Layer](https://help-networkos.collaboration.ai/the-knowledge-layer?hsLang=en#main-content)
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