Eckho Desktop is a Windows application that turns any folder on your computer into a knowledge base you can talk to. You point it at a folder — a project directory, a document library, a legal case file, a book manuscript, an insurance-policy archive — Eckho indexes it once, and from then on you can:

• Browse the folder and open files in a built-in viewer.
• Ask questions in plain language and get answers drawn from inside your files, with citations back to the exact source.
• Act on what you find — ask the AI to summarise, compare, draft, or edit text files, with your approval before anything is written.
• Manage your files — create, rename, move, copy and delete files and folders without leaving the app.

The interface is modelled on VS Code: a multi-column layout with resizable panes, a collapsible sidebar, and tabbed chat sessions. It opens in about one and a half seconds; the AI agent starts in the background so you are never left staring at a loading screen.

Eckho Desktop is currently in Explorer Beta. The Explorer module described in this guide is the main feature set. Other modules (Quick Chat, Workspace, Studio) will appear in the same window as the product grows.

Who it's for

Eckho Desktop is built for people who work with large, growing sets of files on their own machine and need to stay private about it — for example: legal case preparation, insurance administration, investment and portfolio records, medical and health records, research archives, and operations teams managing shared drives. If you find yourself uploading files to a cloud AI, waiting, downloading the result, and doing it again, that is the cycle Eckho Desktop removes.

What Eckho Desktop is not

• It is not cloud storage. Your files stay on your machine.
• It is not a sync tool. It reads and manages your existing folders where they already are. It never moves or renames your files on its own.
• It is not a code editor. It has no terminals, linters or debuggers — it is built for document and admin work, not programming.
• Indexing does not change your files. It reads them to build a private local search index. Any change to a file only happens through a deliberate action you take or an AI edit you approve.
• It does not need the internet to browse or manage files. An internet connection is only needed for AI chat, because the language models run as online services.

Install

1. Download the Eckho Desktop installer from your Eckho dashboard at eckho.ai (or the link provided by your reseller).
2. Run the installer. It is a single Windows installer that sets up everything — the desktop window, the background AI agent, and the system-tray launcher.
3. When it finishes, Eckho Desktop starts automatically and an Eckho icon appears in your Windows system tray (bottom-right, near the clock).

Updating to a new version is the same process: run the new installer over the top. Your folders, indexes, chats, settings and license carry across.

The system tray launcher

Eckho Desktop lives in the system tray. Right-click the tray icon for:

• Open Explorer — opens (or re-focuses) the main window.
• Check for Updates — checks whether a newer version is available.
• Quit — closes Eckho Desktop completely.

Closing the main window does not quit Eckho — use Quit from the tray menu for that. If the window ever seems stuck, choosing Open Explorer from the tray closes the old window and opens a fresh one.

First launch and the "agent starting" wait

When the window opens, the file tree and all four columns are visible and usable straight away. The AI agent — the part that does indexing and answers questions — takes a few more seconds to come online. Watch the status indicator at the top-right of the window:

Until the indicator turns green, the chat box is disabled. Folder browsing works regardless. If the agent takes more than about three seconds, a small card appears in the centre of the window ("Connecting to Eckho Agent…") so you can see it is working, not frozen. It clears itself the moment the agent connects. See Section 18.

First-run help wizard

The Help (?) button in the header opens a short getting-started wizard with two tabs: Getting Started (the basic add-folder → index → ask flow, plus an advisory for cloud-synced folders) and Tips (general usage tips). You can reopen this wizard any time from the header.

Eckho Desktop's main window has a header bar across the top and four columns below it.

Layout behaviour common to all columns

• Resize any column by dragging the divider between it and its neighbour.
• Column 1 collapses to a narrow icon-only strip (click the chevron at its top) to give the other columns more room; expand it again to see text labels.
• Column 3 (the viewer) can be toggled fully open or closed with the Viewer button in the header. When it is collapsed, a thin indigo strip appears between Column 2 and Column 4 — click that strip to bring the viewer back. Selecting any file also reopens it automatically.
• Your layout — column widths, collapsed/expanded state — is remembered between sessions.
• The controls at the top of each column apply to that column only.

The header bar

Column 1 is the command centre for folders and indexing. Collapsed, it is a strip of icons; expanded, each icon has a text label. The active item is marked with an indigo bar on its left edge.

It has two separate groups: a Folders group (add a folder to Eckho, remove one from the tree) and an Index group (build, update or delete a folder's search index). You add a folder with the Folders group first, then index it with the Index group — they are different controls.

Folders group

Index group

Bottom of the icon bar

Column 2 shows every registered folder as an expandable tree of sub-folders and files.

Tree toolbar

File status dots

Each file has a small coloured dot showing its index state:

Files that cannot be indexed at all (unsupported type, empty, far too large) are simply skipped and usually do not appear in the tree.

Folders show a change indicator too

When a file is stale (blue), every parent folder above it, all the way up to the registered root, also shows a blue dot with a count — for example (3) meaning three files below it need reindexing. This lets you spot at a glance which branch of a large tree has changed. The indicators clear automatically after a successful reindex.

Selecting and "standing on" items

• Click a file to select it. It opens in the viewer (Column 3), and it becomes the AI's focus.
• Click a folder (or its chevron) to expand or collapse it. Selecting a folder makes that folder the AI's focus.
• The item you have selected is the one you are "standing on". The AI treats whatever you are standing on as the first place to look for an answer. Stand on a folder for broad questions; stand on a single file for a deep-dive on that document.
• Drag and drop files and folders within the tree to reorganise them on disk.
• After the AI answers, the files it cited are highlighted in amber in the tree. Click one to reopen it in the viewer.

Right-click menu

Right-clicking in the tree gives context actions. The most useful:

Index progress area

While a folder is indexing, a panel appears above the tree showing:

• A progress bar with a percentage and an estimated time remaining.
• A live file feed — a scrolling list of each file as it is processed.
• A stage label: Scanning → Extracting → Chunking → Embedding.
• A skipped count — how many files were bypassed.
• A Stop button to cancel the run.

Column 3 previews whatever file you select in the tree. Toggle it open or closed with the Viewer button in the header. When it is collapsed, a thin indigo strip sits between Column 2 and Column 4 — click it to reopen the viewer. Clicking any file in the tree also reopens the viewer if it was collapsed.

What it can show

How the viewer behaves

• The viewer is read-only. You cannot type edits directly into it.
• When you click a citation in an AI answer, the viewer opens that file and jumps to the passage the answer used.
• When the AI proposes an edit, the change is shown here as a side-by-side comparison — the old text in red, the new text in green — with Accept and Reject buttons. Nothing is written to the file until you click Accept.
• After you save a file, or accept an AI edit, the viewer reloads the whole file from disk — you always see the final version in full context, not just the part that changed.
• File tabs: each file you open gets a tab at the top of the viewer. Right-click a tab for Close, Close All, or Open Externally. (File tabs cannot be renamed.)
• Open externally / show in Explorer: you can open the selected file in its normal Windows app (Word, Excel, a PDF reader) or reveal it in Windows File Explorer.

Column 4 is where you talk to Eckho. It is the right-most column.

Chats are saved, and grouped by folder

• Every chat is saved automatically to a local database and survives restarts. You never lose a conversation by closing Eckho.
• Chats are grouped by the registered root folder — the top-level folder you added and indexed — not by whichever sub-folder you happen to be browsing. Browsing around inside a folder does not change which chat you are in.
• When you open or switch to a folder, Column 4 loads that folder's most recent chat. If the folder has no chats yet, you get a fresh blank one.

The chat header controls

• Auto-naming: a new chat takes its name from your first message (shortened). It is named once and does not keep re-naming itself.
• Rename: click the pencil on the active chat's row in the dropdown and type a new name.
• Delete: click the trash icon. After deleting, Eckho switches to the next most recent chat for that folder, or a blank one if none remain.
• Move a chat to another folder: done from Settings → Chat History (see Section 16) — useful if you chatted against the wrong folder.
• While an answer is still streaming, the history dropdown and New Chat are locked, so an answer cannot land in the wrong chat.

Chat modes

A small pill selector in the chat panel sets how widely the AI searches:

• Folder mode — the AI searches across the whole indexed folder to answer.
• File mode — the AI restricts itself to the single file currently open in the viewer. Use this for detailed questions about one specific document.

This works together with what you are "standing on" in the tree: stand on a folder and use Folder mode for broad questions; open a file and switch to File mode to drill in.

The chat box

• A multi-line text box with a Send button.
• Disabled when the agent is starting, offline, has no internet, or when the folder you are pointed at is currently being indexed (the box shows "Indexing in progress").
• Enabled when the agent is running (including when it is running but slow).
• Spell-check: misspelled words are underlined. Right-click one for correction suggestions and an "Add to Dictionary" option.
• Cancel: while an answer is generating, the Send button becomes a Cancel button.

How answers appear

• Answers stream in word by word as the model writes them.
• Full formatting is rendered: headings, bullet and numbered lists, bold and italic, tables, code blocks, and links.
• Citations appear inline as numbered markers — [1], [2] — with a matching source list beneath the answer. Each source names the file the information came from.
• Click any citation to highlight that file in the tree and open it in the viewer at the relevant spot. This is how you verify an answer — every factual claim can be traced to its source.

Conversation memory

The AI remembers recent messages within a chat so you can ask follow-up questions naturally ("and what about the second one?"). How many past messages it carries is set in Settings → LSR → Context & Memory (default 20). Reopening a long old chat shows the whole conversation on screen, but only that same capped number of recent messages is sent to the AI — so reopening history does not cost you extra credits.

The basic flow

1. Add a folder— Browse & Add or Add by Path in the Folders group at the top of Column 1.
2. Index it— select the folder, then click Index Folder in the Index group of Column 1. Wait for it to finish — live progress (a bar, the file-by-file feed, an ETA and the current stage) appears in Column 2, above the tree.
3. Browse and ask— open files in the viewer, and ask the AI about them in Column 4.

When indexing finishes, a note also appears under the Notifications bell in Column 1. The bell only carries the completion message — the live progress is always in Column 2.

What indexing actually does

Indexing reads your files and builds a private, local search index so the AI can find relevant passages quickly. In order, it:

1. Scans the folder and all sub-folders for files.
2. Extracts the text from each supported file (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, email, text).
3. Splits that text into overlapping passages.
4. Embeds each passage — converts it into a numerical form that lets the AI match on meaning, not just exact words.

How long it takes

It depends on how many files there are and how large they are. Small folders index in under a minute; large document archives can take several minutes. You can keep working while it runs (see Section 19), and you can Stop it at any point.

Index Folder vs Reindex vs Remove Index vs Remove from Tree

Folder limits

Your plan sets how many folders you can index at once (Trial: 3; paid plans: 5 or unlimited — see Section 17). If you try to add a folder beyond your limit, Eckho shows your license details and how to upgrade. Removing the index from a folder frees a slot.

The AI only knows what was in your files at the time you last indexed them. If you edit a document in Word, add new files, or delete some, the index is out of date until you reindex. From version 4.5.0, Eckho watches for this and tells you.

How Eckho detects changes

• On startup, a few seconds after the agent is ready, Eckho runs a quick low-priority background scan of every registered folder. It compares each file's "last modified" time against what it indexed. This is a fast check — it does not re-read file contents — so it never slows the app down or blocks the tree.
• The scan runs again when you click Refresh in the tree toolbar, and when you switch back to the Eckho window from another app (at most once every ~45 seconds).
• A small spinner and label at the top of the file list show it running: "Checking for changes…" then, when done, "N files changed since last index".

What you see when files have changed

• Each changed file gets a blue dot in the tree.
• Every parent folder up to the registered root gets a blue dot and a count, e.g. (4), so you can see which branch changed without expanding everything.
• A strip appears just below the header: "N file(s) changed — reindex needed", with a Reindex button.
• The Index icon in Column 1 gains a blue highlight and a count badge.

Click Reindex (either button) to bring the index up to date. All the indicators and badges clear automatically once the reindex finishes.

How Reindex works (why it is usually fast, sometimes not)

Eckho keeps two fingerprints for every file: its modified-time and a content checksum. On a reindex it classifies each file:

So a reindex after changing three files only re-processes those three. However, before it can skip anything, Eckho still has to walk the whole folder and checksum every file to build that comparison — on a very large folder that scan alone can take a few minutes even when little has changed. That is expected. A full rebuild of everything only happens if you changed Chunk Size or Chunk Overlap in Settings → LSR since the last run.

Eckho fully supports folders that live on a cloud-synced drive, and it handles them carefully so nothing goes wrong with your sync.

The index is kept local

When you add a folder that sits inside Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox, Eckho detects this automatically and stores the index in a local Eckho folder on your machine, not on the cloud drive. Keeping the index local:

• Prevents sync conflicts and file-locking errors on the synced drive.
• Stops the index and its metadata from being uploaded to your cloud provider.
• Keeps the index specific to this machine (each computer builds its own).

Online-only files are skipped

If a cloud file is shown in Explorer but is not actually downloaded to your disk (an "online-only" or "cloud placeholder" file), Eckho cannot read it and skips it during indexing, with a clear note. To include such a file, make it available offline in your cloud app (so it downloads locally), then reindex.

Answers stay scoped to the folder

Even though several cloud folders may share the same local Eckho index store, the AI only ever draws on the folder you are actually working in. Content from unrelated folders cannot leak into an answer.

Moving the local index store

Settings → Storage shows where the central cloud-index store lives (by default under your Windows local app data). You can move it to another drive — for example a faster disk — and Eckho relocates all existing cloud indexes for you. This setting has no effect on local (non-cloud) folders, whose indexes stay inside each folder's own .eckho sub-folder.

How Eckho answers

Eckho does not just keyword-search. For each question it:

1. Works out what you are really asking (a fact, a list, a summary, a comparison).
2. Breaks a complex question into a few focused sub-questions.
3. Searches the index two ways at once — by meaning (semantic) and by keyword — and blends the results.
4. Ranks the best passages and hands them to the language model with your question.
5. The model writes the answer, streamed back to you with citations.

Writing good questions

• Be specific. "What is the penalty clause in the Acme contract?" beats "tell me about Acme".
• Name things. Reference codes, document names, dates and figures all help the search land on the right passage.
• Stand on the right place. For a question about one document, open it and use File mode. For a cross-document question, stand on the folder and use Folder mode.
• Paste a relative path. Right-click a file → Copy Relative Path → paste it into your question so the AI knows exactly which file you mean.
• Ask follow-ups naturally. The chat remembers the last several messages.
• Check the citations. If an answer matters, click through to the source and confirm it.

What the retrieval engine is good at

• Finding a specific identifier (a reference number, a code) across thousands of files.
• Numeric questions — it keeps values, units and table rows intact and puts tables before prose.
• Comparisons — pulling evidence from several documents into one answer.
• Summaries — both high-level (whole-document) and detailed.
• Step-by-step procedures from manuals and specifications.
• Flagging conflicts — if two documents disagree on a number, it says so rather than silently picking one.

If an answer looks wrong or incomplete

• The source file may have changed since indexing — look for a blue dot / the "reindex needed" strip and reindex (Section 9).
• The file may be partial (orange dot) — the AI got little or no text from it.
• Try rephrasing with more specific terms, or switch to a higher AI level (see Section 15).
• For a single-document question, switch to File mode so the search is not diluted by the rest of the folder.

Turn on the Workbench pill in Column 4 to switch from "answer my question" to "work on this for me". In Workbench mode the AI decides what steps to take — it can read and find files across your registered folders, fetch a web page you point it to, search the knowledge base, and propose edits — and completes a multi-step task in a single conversation turn.

What the AI can do in Workbench mode

It plans first on bigger tasks

When a task looks like it needs several steps, the AI writes a short numbered plan before it starts, and notes progress as it works through each item, so you can follow what it is doing.

Nothing is written without your approval

Any change to a file pauses the AI and waits for you:

• Section edit (the normal case for editing an existing file) — the viewer shows a red/green comparison of just the changed lines. Click Accept to apply it or Reject to discard it. On Accept, the viewer reloads the whole file so you see the change in context.
• Full file (for brand-new files or an explicit "rewrite the whole thing") — the AI shows the complete proposed contents, with the same Accept/Reject choice.

Both outcomes — accepted and rejected — are recorded in an audit log inside Eckho, with a timestamp, the file path, a plain description of the change, and whether you accepted it. If you do not respond within five minutes, the proposal times out and nothing is written. While a proposal is on screen, the chat box is blocked until you accept or reject it.

If a big task hits the step limit

A Workbench task can take up to 25 tool actions in one turn. A large job (for example: read a brief, read six related files, update six sections) can reach that limit before finishing. When it does, you get a plain message — "I reached my step limit before finishing…" — and a ▶ Continue (25 more steps) button. Click it to let the AI carry on, or rephrase / split the task into smaller parts.

The "thinking" display

While the AI is working, a small rolling progress display shows what it is doing in everyday language and a running seconds timer — for example "Searching through your files… you've got quite a few", then "Found it. Reading now so I don't miss anything", then "Right, I've got everything I need. Leave this with me" just before a proposed edit appears. It never shows file paths or technical tool names.

Viewing

Select any file in the tree to preview it in the viewer (Column 3). See Section 6 for supported formats.

Creating, renaming, moving, copying, deleting

All of these are done from the Column 2 toolbar or the tree right-click menu:

• New File / New Folder — created inside the selected location.
• Rename — in place; no slashes allowed in the name.
• Move / Copy — to another folder. Both the source and the destination must be folders you have registered in Eckho.
• Delete — permanent, from disk, with a confirmation prompt. On sub-folders this appears as "Delete from Drive" so it is unmistakable.

Removing a folder from Eckho vs deleting it

On a registered root folder, the right-click menu offers Remove from Tree (folder leaves Eckho; files, index and chats all kept) and Remove & Clear Index (also drops the index and that folder's chats). Neither deletes your files. There is no "delete from disk" option on a root folder — that is deliberate.

Saving edits

When you save a file through Eckho, it writes the file as UTF-8 text, reloads it in the viewer, and marks the file for reindex so the change is not forgotten.

AI edits are limited to plain-text files

See the next section for why and what to do about it.

Opening files elsewhere

From the right-click menu or a viewer tab you can Open Externally (launches Word, Excel, your PDF reader, etc.) or reveal the file in Windows File Explorer.

This is one of the most common sources of confusion, so it is worth understanding.

What Eckho can and cannot do with Office files

• Can — Eckho can read and index Word (.docx, .doc), Excel (.xlsx, .xls) and PowerPoint (.pptx) files. The AI can answer questions about their contents and cite them.
• Cannot — Eckho cannot create or change Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. It cannot write to them at all.

Why

Word and Excel files are packaged binary formats. Editing them safely and correctly requires the Office applications themselves. Plain-text formats have no such complexity — the AI can edit them precisely and predictably, so Eckho restricts AI writing to plain text.

What Markdown is

Markdown (.md) is a plain-text format that uses simple symbols for structure:

• #, ##, ### for headings
• - or * for bullet points
• 1. 2. for numbered lists
• **bold** and *italic*
• | to lay out tables

A Markdown file opens in any text editor and is perfectly readable as-is, with no special software. Eckho renders it nicely in the viewer and the AI can edit it directly.

The AI level selector in the header sets which model answers your next question. You can change it per question.

• Default: Fast (GPT) — a good all-round choice for most questions.
• All plans include Fast (GPT) and Swift (Claude). Smart and Deep need LLM Pro — a +$9/month add-on on the Explorer plan, and included on Workbench and above.
• Locked levels: if a level appears locked, your licence does not have LLM Pro active. Add it in Settings → License or move to a plan that includes it.
• API keys are included with your licensed installation. You do not set up or pay for OpenAI or Anthropic accounts separately.
• In Workbench mode, the many small "thinking" steps use a fast, low-cost model automatically; your chosen level is used for the final written answer.
• A default level can also be set in Settings → LSR, and per-question switching can be turned on or off there.

Open Settings from the cog icon at the bottom of Column 1. Sections are listed down the left of the Settings window.

Credits

Your monthly allowance is measured in Credits. One credit corresponds to a unit of AI processing. Longer questions and longer answers use more credits; higher AI levels use more than lower ones.

• Indexing never uses credits. Only chat questions and Workbench steps do.
• Usage is hard-stopped at your plan limit — Eckho will not run up an unexpected bill. When you hit the limit, AI chat pauses until the 1st of the next month or until you upgrade.
• Plan credits reset on the 1st of each calendar month. You can also buy top-up credits (about $1 per 1,000 credits) — these do not expire and carry over month to month.
• See your credits in Settings → Usage — used, remaining and the reset month. The License panel does not show credit figures.

Plans

License states

When expired, a License Expired badge appears in the header; clicking it opens Settings → License, where the Email and WhatsApp renewal buttons are. Entering a new key in Settings → License → Activate reactivates immediately, no restart. If Ragteck extends your existing license on their side, use the Refresh button rather than reinstalling.

The "pill" at the top-right of the window shows what the AI agent is doing. Eckho checks the agent's health every few seconds.

The centre-screen connection card

Because the pill is small and easy to miss, Eckho also shows a card in the middle of the window when it matters: "Connecting to Eckho Agent…" with a spinner appears if the agent takes more than about 3 seconds to come online at startup (fast starts never show it); "Agent Offline" with a wifi-off icon appears if the agent cannot be reached, including if the connection drops mid-session. The card does not block the app, you can dismiss it with its ×, and it clears itself automatically once the agent connects.

You do not have to wait for one thing to finish before doing another. What is and is not available:

While a folder is indexing

While the AI is answering

Agent

The background program that indexes folders and answers questions. Runs from the system tray; its state is shown by the status pill.

Index

The private, local, searchable copy of your folder's text that the AI uses. Built by "indexing"; does not alter your files.

Embedding

The numerical form of a text passage that lets the AI match on meaning rather than exact words.

Chunk / passage

A small section of a file's text. The AI retrieves and cites passages, not whole files.

Citation

A numbered marker in an answer linking a statement to the file it came from. Click it to open the source.

Standing on

The file or folder you currently have selected in the tree — the AI's first focus for answers.

Registered root folder

A top-level folder you added to Eckho. Sub-folders inside it are not separate roots. Chats and index are keyed to the root.

Folder mode / File mode

Whether the AI searches the whole folder or just the one open file.

Workbench mode

Agentic mode — the AI plans and carries out multi-step tasks: reading and finding files across your registered folders, fetching a web page you name, searching, and proposing file edits for your approval.

Web fetch

A Workbench action — the assistant retrieves a web address you give it and reads the page text. It happens only when you ask; the AI does not browse or search the web on its own.

Read scope / write scope

In Workbench mode the AI can read files in any folder you have registered; it can only write inside the folder you are actively working in.

Change detection

The startup / on-focus scan that flags files modified since the last index, so you know to reindex.

Reindex

Updating an existing index — only new and changed files are re-processed.

Partial file

A file that was indexed but yielded little or no text (orange dot) — often a scanned PDF.

Credit

The unit of monthly AI allowance. Questions and Workbench steps use credits; indexing does not.

LLM Pro

A license flag that unlocks the Smart and Deep AI levels.

LSR

Eckho's retrieval engine ("Local Search & Retrieval") — the part that finds the right passages for each question.

Cloud folder

A registered folder inside Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox. Its index is always kept local.

Online-only file

A cloud file visible in Explorer but not downloaded to disk. Skipped during indexing until made available offline.

Machine ID

A fingerprint of this computer used to bind your license to it. Shown in Settings → License.

Add a new row for every revision. Bump the third digit set (-g2, -g3, …) for text-only updates against the same app version; move to the next <app version>-g1 when a new Eckho Desktop version is documented.