The word allowance

What words measure

Your word allowance measures what you put into Mindola: the knowledge you build up. It is a literal word count of everything you ingest, and each source is counted once, when it is added:

• Files you upload - PDF, Word, plain text, Markdown.
• Web pages and links you save.
• Notes and text you paste in.
• Q&A pairs you write.
• Audio and video you upload, counted as the words in the transcript.
• Images you add, counted as the words read out of them by OCR.
• Voice notes you record, counted as the words in the transcript.

What does not use words

• Chat. Talking to Mindola does not touch the allowance. Chat has its own per-day message limit instead; see Plans and billing.
• Lens conversations. Visitors chatting with your lenses do not draw from your allowance.
• Read-only actions. Opening Settings, browsing conversations, searching your knowledge, exporting your data: none of it counts.

In short, words measure your library, not your conversations.

A one-time lifetime grant

Every plan comes with its own lifetime allowance; the exact numbers are shown in the app in Settings then Subscription. As a rough sense of scale, 100,000 words is about one long book.

The allowance does not refill on a schedule: no monthly reset, no weekly top-up. The number you start with is the number you get on that plan. When you upgrade, your cap rises to the new plan’s full amount and your used words carry over; they are never wiped. The free trial does not raise the allowance either - it unlocks paid features, not extra words.

Deleting a source refunds its words

When you delete a file, link, PDF, or any other source from your knowledge, the exact words it cost are credited back to your allowance automatically, the moment you delete. The source’s content - chunks, embeddings, and the uploaded file itself - is fully removed as well.

• If a source is used by a published lens, the delete confirmation tells you which lenses are affected before you commit. Deleting still works; the lens just loses access to that source on its next answer.
• Sources added before this feature launched do not carry their original word count on record, so deleting those legacy sources refunds nothing. Anything added since refunds exactly what it spent.

When you run out

When the allowance hits zero, you can no longer add new knowledge: uploads, files, links, and voice transcription stop. Chat keeps working normally. You see a card explaining what happened, with one path forward: upgrade to a plan with a bigger allowance.

Your existing data is untouched. Facts, conversations, sources, and lenses all stay, and upgrading lets you add knowledge again immediately. In exceptional cases support can grant extra words: if your account hit zero unfairly, through a bug or a runaway import, email support@mindola.ai and Mindola will take a look.

A note on languages

Words are counted across every language. Scripts written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, are counted per character group, so the same passage in those languages can use more of your allowance than it would in English.

Tips to make it last

• Audio and video are the heaviest sources: transcription turns minutes of speech into thousands of words. Add the recordings that really matter.
• Pasted text and PDFs are light; links and short notes barely move the needle.
• Trim sources you no longer need; the words come straight back to your allowance.
• Watch the “Words used” bar in Settings then Subscription so you know where you stand.