# What are Knowledge Bases?

Knowledge Bases are collections of Data Sources that applications can query to retrieve information. Knowledge Bases enable you control which Data Sources can be accessed by applications. Once you have created the Data Source(s) you need, add them to a Knowledge Base so that your application, such as a Griptape Cloud Assistant or an Agent in a Structure, can access them.

When you add Data Sources to a Knowledge Base, your data is automatically upserted to a database that is optimized for use with LLMs so that the data can be retrieved quickly and processed efficiently. Achieving this outside Griptape Cloud requires you to maintain a database to store your data, operating a data ingestion pipeline to collect data, and provide and operate a query endpoint to make it available. Griptape Cloud Knowledge Bases automate this process for you.
