Compound treats PDFs as a first-class source. Upload a 10-K, board deck, research note, or earnings transcript and the agent can quote passages with page-level citations, extract tables into an Excel workbook, summarize sections in chat, and cross-reference multiple PDFs in the same conversation.
Upload a PDF
Drag the PDF onto the chat composer, paste it, or click the upload icon. There’s no special handling required for long files — the agent indexes the entire document for retrieval.
For SEC filings specifically, you don’t need to upload anything: toggle SEC Filings in the composer’s Public data section and reference the filing by ticker and form type (“the latest 10-Q for ACME”). The filing is pulled from EDGAR and cited the same way as an uploaded PDF.
Ask questions with citations
Once a PDF is in the chat, ask anything you’d ask a junior analyst:
- “Summarize the risk factors section.”
- “What did management say about gross margin in the call?”
- “Compare the segment guidance in this 10-Q to the prior quarter.”
The agent answers in chat and cites the passages it drew from with a page reference. Click any citation to jump to that page of the PDF in Canvas View with the relevant passage highlighted.
Extract tables to a workbook
PDFs from filings, research, and decks often contain tables that would take hours to retype. Ask the agent to extract them:
- “Pull the segment revenue table on page 47 into an Excel sheet.”
- “Extract every table from the financial statements section into a single workbook.”
The agent creates a new Excel file in the same chat (or appends to an existing one), preserving column headers, totals, and any footnoted values. Citations are attached to each extracted figure if you turn on Include citation links as comments when exporting the workbook.
Cross-reference multiple PDFs
Attach two or three PDFs and the agent will reason across them. “Compare the management discussion in this quarter’s 10-Q against last quarter’s, and flag any meaningful tone changes.” Citations include which file each passage came from.
SEC filings as a built-in source
The SEC Filings toggle covers the most common filing types — 10-K, 10-Q, 8-K, proxy statements, S-1, 13F — pulled live from EDGAR. You don’t need to download anything; the agent fetches the filing and treats it identically to an uploaded PDF.
For research workflows that span multiple companies and quarters, leave SEC Filings on for the whole chat.
What to read next
- Workbooks (Excel) — the destination for most table extractions.
- Connectors and data sources — the full list of public sources, including Earnings Transcripts.
- Chats and the AI agent — how citations and attachments work in general.