Getting Started
The shortest path from a blank workspace to a cited answer in MARCUS.
This section is written for a resident, clinician, coordinator, educator, or administrator opening MARCUS for the first time. The goal is simple: get you from an empty workspace to a trustworthy, cited answer without requiring technical background.
What You Should Have Before You Start
You do not need programming knowledge to use MARCUS well. You do need a few practical things ready:
- A clear use case. For example: postoperative wound care, discharge criteria, overnight escalation policy, or a teaching file for one rotation.
- A small set of trusted documents. Start with current institutional protocols, finalized policies, or stable reference documents.
- Enough time to wait for indexing. Uploading takes seconds, but ingestion and enrichment continue in the background.
- A concrete first question. Good first questions ask about a threshold, a workflow, a comparison, or a policy decision.
If you begin with a mixed project, outdated documents, or a vague question, MARCUS will still answer, but the answer will be harder to judge and more likely to reflect the confusion in the corpus.
A 15-Minute First Run
The fastest clean first experience usually looks like this:
- Create one project for one clinical or operational context.
- Upload two to five trusted documents, not your entire drive.
- Wait until those sources show an indexed or ready status.
- Read at least one source briefing to make sure the uploaded material looks correct.
- Ask a narrow question with a clear expected answer type.
- Open the citations and compare the answer to the underlying source text.
If that sequence works well, you can broaden the corpus gradually. If it works poorly, you can fix the project early before dozens of uploads make the cleanup harder.
The First Three Skills To Learn
Create Your First Project
Choose a scope that keeps retrieval focused and keeps later interpretation simple.
Upload Your First Document
Learn what files work best, what ingestion does, and how to tell when a source is really ready.
Ask Your First Question
Learn how to phrase a useful question and how to judge whether the answer is sufficiently grounded.
What Success Looks Like
Your first MARCUS project is working well if all of the following are true:
- The project name tells you exactly what belongs inside it.
- The source list contains documents that obviously fit together.
- Briefings and tags make sense when you skim them.
- The first answer cites documents you expected MARCUS to use.
- The cited passages actually contain the information the answer claims they contain.
- If the answer is weak, you can explain why. For example: not enough sources, poor source quality, or a question that is too broad.
That last point is important. A healthy first experience does not mean every answer is perfect. It means the system's strengths and limits are understandable enough that you know what to do next.
The Most Common First-Time Mistakes
| Mistake | Why it causes problems | Better habit |
|---|---|---|
| Uploading everything into one project | Retrieval becomes mixed and harder to interpret | Start with one focused topic or workflow per project |
| Uploading drafts, duplicates, or low-quality scans | The system may retrieve weak or redundant evidence | Start with the final approved versions first |
| Asking a very broad first question | The answer may be generic even if the corpus is good | Ask for a threshold, criterion, step, or comparison |
| Trusting the first answer without opening citations | Grounding is only useful if you inspect it | Open the cited text for high-stakes decisions |
| Assuming missing evidence means MARCUS is wrong | Sometimes the source simply was not uploaded or indexed yet | Check project scope, source status, and coverage signals before concluding there is a model failure |
Where To Go Next
After the first-run pages, most users should continue in this order:
- /docs/guides/reading-briefings to learn how MARCUS describes each source.
- /docs/guides/authority-levels to understand how the system weights sources.
- /docs/guides/troubleshooting-answers to learn what to do when answers are weak or conflicting.
If you are setting up a larger shared workspace, add /docs/guides/managing-projects early. Project quality determines answer quality more than most people expect.
If You Only Need One Rule
Treat MARCUS as a fast evidence navigator, not as an independent source of clinical judgment. For anything consequential, read the citations before acting.