AI in Return

Return’s AI is built around one principle: your documents are yours. Local processing is the default, cloud AI is opt-in, and every feature works whether you’re online or off.

There are four pieces that work together. This page is a map — each section below points to its full article.

Providers — where your AI runs

Return supports two ways of running AI: local (through Ollama on your own machine) and cloud (Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s GPT through Return’s proxy). Local is the default; cloud is opt-in through a paid plan. You can switch per conversation.

The trade-off is privacy vs. capability. Local models are smaller but never touch the network; cloud models are more capable but require trust in a third party. Most everyday tasks — summarization, editing, Q&A — work great locally.

→ AI Providers — choose between local and cloud → Using Ollama (Local AI) — install, pick a model, troubleshoot

Search — finding what you need

Return has two search layers that work together: keyword search finds exact word matches instantly, and semantic search finds content by meaning. Search for “payment deadlines” and semantic search will surface a paragraph about “invoices are due within 30 days” — even though the words don’t overlap.

Semantic search runs on embeddings generated locally; nothing leaves your machine.

→ Search — how keyword and semantic search work

Returns — reusable AI prompts

A Return is a YAML template that captures a repeatable AI task: “summarize this contract”, “extract action items”, “translate to Polish”. You author a Return once, then invoke it from the Quick Actions bar on any document.

Returns can produce text, lists, structured JSON, Traffic Light assessments (green/yellow/red), or inline annotations — depending on the output type you choose.

Chains — composing Returns

When you find yourself running two or three Returns in sequence on the same document, combine them into a Chain. The output of step N becomes the input of step N+1, the user fills in one form covering all variables, and the whole sequence runs as a single Quick Action.

→ Composing Returns — chain Returns into multi-step workflows

What’s next

If you’re new, start with AI Providers to pick local or cloud. If you want to set up local AI now, jump to Using Ollama. For workflow automation, see Composing Returns.