Asking Athos Well

Using the Athos AI Assistant describes what Athos can do. This page is about getting it to do it: how to phrase a question, what Athos can and cannot see when it answers, and what to do when the answer is wrong.

Most disappointing answers come from one of three things — asking about something Athos cannot see, naming an object differently from the way the project names it, or asking a second question while the first one is still colouring the conversation. All three are easy to avoid.

Know which question you are asking

Athos decides for itself which of its abilities to use, and it decides from the shape of your question. You do not choose a mode, but it helps to know that these are four different jobs:

You are asking	Looks like	Answered from
How do I…	"How do I export a sedimentary log?"	The documentation bundled with VRGS
What is…	"What controls the geometry of hybrid event beds?"	Your literature library, or the model's general knowledge
What is in my project…	"How many orientations are in the Fault Blocks group?"	Your project database
What am I looking at…	"Is the highlighted surface in front of the fault?"	The 3D view, as it is right now

A question that mixes two of them gets a worse answer than two questions asked in turn. "How do I make a stereonet and what does mine show?" is two jobs; ask the second after the first.

Name things the way the project does

Athos matches what you type against what is actually in the project. The closer you get to the real names, the better it does.

✅ "List the plane attitudes in Cliff Section 2 with a dip over 60." ❌ "List the steep beds in the second bit of the cliff."

The same goes for attributes and groups: use the name as it appears in the tree. If you cannot remember it, ask — "what groups are in the interpretation tree?" — and then ask the real question.

For database work, two commands are worth knowing before you start:

• /tables lists the tables in the project database.
• /sample <table> shows a few rows, so you can see what the columns are actually called.

Ten seconds with those turns a vague question into one Athos can answer exactly.

Give it one thing at a time

Athos keeps the conversation, so questions build on each other. Use that deliberately:

1. "How many measurements are in the project?"
2. "Group those by object."
3. "Just the ones dipping more than 45."

That works much better than asking for all three at once, and you can see where it went wrong if it does.

When you change subject, type /reset. The running context is what makes follow-ups work, and it is also what makes an unrelated new question drift back towards the old one. /reset clears the context without clearing the transcript; /clear empties the panel as well.

Questions about the 3D view

Athos captures the view as part of answering, so what is on screen is what it sees:

• Frame the shot first. If the feature is off-screen, tiny or hidden behind something, Athos sees it that way too.
• A bigger 3D window gives it more to work with.
• Each question captures afresh, so "and what about the left of that image?" does not refer to the previous picture. Repeat the part that matters.
• The active window has to be a 3D view. If a photograph, map or log is in front, there is no scene to capture and Athos will say so.

Colour in a 3D view usually comes from an attribute rather than from rock, so treat a geological reading of a screenshot with care — ask about geometry, position and what is displayed rather than about lithology.

Read the References

When an answer comes from the help documentation or from your literature library, Athos lists what it used under References — help pages with their title, section and a link; papers with authors, year, title and DOI.

Use it. An answer with references you can open is one you can check in a few seconds; an answer with none came from the model's general knowledge, which is worth knowing before you act on it.

When the answer is wrong

• It cites the wrong page. Rephrase using the wording VRGS itself uses — the menu label, the button name, the property as it appears in the panel.
• It talks about a feature you do not have. Some features need a licence feature; see Why Is This Greyed Out?.
• It answers a previous question. /reset, then ask again.
• It is heading somewhere useless. /stop, and rephrase rather than waiting.
• You want to report it. /snapshot saves the conversation and its context to a JSON file with secrets redacted — that is the thing to attach to a support request, rather than a screenshot of the panel.

Ask it to show its working

For database questions, /sql on shows the query Athos ran. Even if you do not read SQL, seeing that it counted the wrong table is much quicker than puzzling over why the number looks odd.

A starting set of questions

Worth trying on your own project, in roughly this order:

Finding your way around

"What can you do?" "Where is the tool for measuring bedding orientation?" "What is the difference between Difference Map and M3C2?"

Understanding the project

"What groups are in the interpretation tree?" "How many orientations are there, grouped by object?" "Which meshes have an attribute called Roughness?"

Looking at the model

"What objects are visible right now?" "Centre the view on the model." "What is the highlighted object called?"

Writing up

"Write up the stereonet analysis for this outcrop." "Check the spelling and grammar in this section." "Describe the figure the cursor is in."

Athos here and Athos in VRGS

There are two, and they are not the same.

	Athos in VRGS	Athos on this site
Where	The Athos panel in the application	The Athos AI page
Knows about	The documentation, your project, your 3D view, your literature library	The published documentation only
Answers about your data	Yes	No — it has never seen your project
Cites	Help pages and your papers	Pages on this site

Use the one on this site to read up before you start, or when you are away from your machine. Use the one in VRGS for anything involving your own project — it is the only one that can see it.

Both answer from the documentation for the released version, so a question about something that has only just shipped may be answered from the previous version's wording.

What is sent, and what is not

Athos sends your question, the running conversation, and — for view questions — a capture of the 3D window. It does not upload your project. Do not paste anything into the chat that you would not want to leave your machine, and see AI & Machine Learning Requirements for connectivity and accounts. Running a local model with Ollama keeps prompts on your own hardware.

See also

• Using the Athos AI Assistant — what Athos can do, the full slash-command list, and setting up the literature library.
• Running Athos Locally with Ollama — keeping prompts on your own hardware.
• AI & Machine Learning Requirements — connectivity, accounts and how Athos differs from the GPU tools.