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Mesa is Caldera PBC’s AI-powered government research and drafting platform. It pairs conversational AI with a curated legal library and a personal document workspace, so you can research, draft, and organize your work in one place. This guide walks you through Mesa in the order most people learn it: set up your account, master the chat, organize your documents and research, then customize Mesa to the way you work.

Set up and learn the basics

New to Mesa? Start with the walkthrough, then get comfortable with the interface.

Getting started with Mesa

Log in, ask your first question, and see results in minutes.

Navigation

Find your way around the home page, top bar, sidebar, and side panel.

Settings

Configure your theme, sidebar behavior, and message controls.

Usage

Understand your model usage allocation and how to pace it.

Get help

Reach the Caldera team from inside Mesa when you need a hand.

Work with the chat

Everything you need to get precise, reliable answers from Mesa’s agents.

Models

Match the right model and effort level to each task.

Text editor

Learn the chat box’s shortcuts and file-referencing features.

Writing effective prompts

Turn vague questions into specific, well-grounded requests.

Attachments

Bring one-off documents into a conversation.

Search

Look up provisions across your legal corpus with exact-phrase matching.

Exhaustive search

Catalogue every match in a corpus, not just the best ones.

Reports

Have the agent draft a document you can edit, share, and publish.

Interactives

Have the agent build a live map, dashboard, or calculator.

Incognito mode

Start a private conversation that leaves your memories untouched.

Notifications

Get alerted when long-running requests finish.

Export a conversation

Save a conversation as a clean PDF transcript.

Organize your documents and research

Keep the materials you rely on saved, searchable, and ready to reuse.

Files

Upload, organize, share, and archive your documents.

Version history

Preview past versions of a file or report, and restore an earlier one.

Connections

Import documents from Google Drive, OneDrive, and other storage.

Library

Browse, annotate, and pin jurisdictions and collections.

Tagging files

Pull saved documents into any conversation with the @ picker.

Shortcuts

File pointers to your work so you can get back to it fast.

Vaults

Research your organization’s own documents alongside the library.

Make Mesa your own

Teach Mesa how you work so every conversation starts from the right place.

Skills

Save reusable instructions for recurring tasks.

Preferences

Set standing instructions and manage Mesa’s memories.

For organization owners

Manage your team and set shared defaults across the workspace.

Organization admin

Add members, assign roles, and monitor team-wide usage.

Teams

Group members into teams so they inherit the same permissions.

Organization customization

Share skills, preferences, and pinned library content with your team.

Organization connections

Connect shared government data sources for your whole team.

Organization settings

Set organization-wide configuration like your timezone.

Organization audit log

Review who did what across your organization, and when.
Stuck on something this guide doesn’t cover? Email support@calderapbc.com and we’ll help you out.
Last modified on August 23, 2026