Scanning multiple documents one at a time is slow and fragmented. With MyBenAI's "chat with folder" feature, you can batch scan 10 or more documents into a single folder, and the AI indexes them locally for fast semantic search and Q&A without uploading anything to the cloud.
The Problem With Single-Document Workflows
Most document AI apps force you into a one-at-a-time workflow: scan or upload a receipt, get an answer, then add the next document. For people managing large collections—receipts from a three-month trip, a stack of medical forms, a folder of contracts, or research papers for a project—this becomes tedious. You're repeating the same steps over and over.
Worse, if you're using cloud-based services, each document upload sends your data to a remote server. By the time you've uploaded 20 PDFs and scanned 30 receipts, your entire financial or medical history is sitting on someone else's servers. This is the core privacy trade-off in document AI: convenience versus control.
What Is "Chat With Folder"?
MyBenAI's "chat with folder" feature solves both problems at once. Instead of scanning individual documents, you point the app to a folder on your phone. MyBenAI automatically discovers all documents in that folder (PDFs, images, scanned photos, notes), indexes them locally, and lets you ask questions across the entire collection in a single chat session.
You get a unified interface: one place to search, ask questions, and get answers about dozens of documents. And because everything stays on your device, your private data never leaves your phone.
Step-by-Step: Scanning Documents Into a Folder
Here's the practical workflow:
- Create a folder on your phone. Use your file manager to create a folder (e.g., "Receipts 2026" or "Medical Records"). This can be anywhere—device storage, Google Drive (synced locally), or OneDrive.
- Add documents to the folder. Scan physical documents with your phone camera, save photos, or move PDFs. MyBenAI supports JPG, PNG, PDF, and Markdown files. You can add 1 document or 100.
- Open MyBenAI and select "Chat With Folder." The app asks you to choose a folder. On Android, this opens the file picker. On iOS, you can bookmark a folder for quick access.
- Let MyBenAI index the folder. The app reads every document, extracts text (using OCR for images, text parsing for PDFs), embeds the content locally, and builds a searchable database. Indexing time depends on folder size and device RAM—larger folders or older phones take longer, but the process runs efficiently in the background.
- Start asking questions. "What were my expenses last month?" "Summarize these three contracts." "Which receipts are over $100?" MyBenAI searches across all documents and answers based on the actual content.
Incremental Resync: Add More Documents Anytime
The power of folder-based indexing is incremental resync. After the first scan, if you add 5 new documents to the folder, MyBenAI doesn't re-index everything from scratch. Instead, it detects the new files (by checking file modification times and sizes), embeds only the new documents, and adds them to the existing index. This is much faster than a full re-index, letting you keep your folder fresh without wasting time or battery.
This means you can treat a folder as a living collection. Add receipts weekly as they come in. Scan new medical forms as you get them. Upload research papers as you find them. MyBenAI keeps the index fresh without wasting time or battery.
Citations: Know Exactly Where Answers Come From
When MyBenAI answers a question, it doesn't just give you text—it cites the source. "Based on your receipt from March 15th (IMG_3847.jpg), your coffee budget was $127 that month." You can tap the citation, and MyBenAI shows you the exact chunk of the original document that the answer came from.
This matters for trust. If you're reviewing contracts and the AI says "This clause limits liability to $500," you can verify that claim by reading the exact page. Citations also help you track down the original document later. Instead of remembering "I think I have a PDF about that," you can say "I found it in the chat history—March 2nd, document 5, paragraph 2."
No Cloud Indexing: Everything Stays Local
This is the privacy core of the feature. When you use cloud-based services like Google Drive OCR, Microsoft Office 365 document search, or ChatGPT file upload, the service indexes your documents on remote servers. Those servers store your content, your queries, and sometimes logs of your interactions. Vendors claim data is encrypted, but it still passes through their infrastructure.
With MyBenAI's chat-with-folder feature, the entire pipeline is local:
- Document files stay in your folder on your device.
- Text extraction (OCR) happens on your phone using SmolVLM or your device's OCR engine.
- Embeddings are computed locally using a lightweight embedding model (E5-small or similar, under 300 MB).
- The vector index is stored in your device's local SQLite database.
- Semantic search happens on your phone without sending queries to any server.
- The language model that answers your questions runs locally—no cloud LLM fallback.
Your message content never leaves your device. Not during indexing, not during search, not during response generation. (MyBenAI does send anonymous usage analytics on-device—install ID, device tier, token counts—to help improve the app, plus standard error reports via Sentry. Message text is never included.)
Use Cases: Who Benefits Most
Expense tracking and tax prep: Scan receipts into a folder throughout the year. At tax time, ask MyBenAI questions like "Total home office expenses," "Meals under $25," or "Medical deductions by category." All answers are grounded in your actual receipts, with citations to each one.
Medical record organization: Create a folder for test results, prescriptions, clinic notes, and insurance documents. Ask "What medications am I currently on?" or "What was my cholesterol last year?" The AI summarizes across documents without uploading your health data anywhere.
Contract and legal document review: Batch-scan employment agreements, leases, insurance policies, and service contracts. Ask "What's my minimum notice period?" or "Which policies cover travel?" MyBenAI extracts the relevant clauses with citations so you can verify.
Research and writing: Add research papers, notes, and reference materials to a folder. Chat with the collection to synthesize ideas, find contradictions, or extract key points—all with citations back to the original sources.
Student coursework: Scan textbook chapters, lecture notes, and past exams into a folder. Use MyBenAI to ask questions about the material across all sources, with citations to chapters and page numbers.
Performance and Limitations
Folder indexing is fast, but performance depends on device RAM and folder size. Small folders index quickly; larger collections with hundreds of documents or high-resolution images take longer. This is a one-time cost; subsequent chats are instant.
One honest trade-off: local embedding search is slower than cloud search. A cloud service uses GPUs and can search millions of embeddings in milliseconds. MyBenAI's local search happens on your phone without network latency, but the compute speed is bounded by your device's CPU. This is still fast enough to feel responsive in conversation, but it's materially slower than cloud infrastructure. For most people, the privacy guarantee and complete control over your data is worth the trade-off.
Also, if your folder contains scanned images with poor quality or handwriting, OCR might struggle. Printed text is reliable; handwritten notes, faxes, and low-contrast scans are less accurate. If accuracy matters (medical records, legal documents), review the extracted text to confirm it's correct.
Getting Started With Chat-With-Folder
To use this feature, you need MyBenAI with a device that has enough RAM for both the embedding model and language model. Most phones with 6 GB+ RAM work fine. On iOS, bookmark your folder for quick access. On Android, grant the app file access when prompted.
Start small: create a folder, add 5–10 documents, and try it out. Once you're comfortable with the workflow, you can create multiple folders for different categories (receipts, medical, work projects, research). Each folder has its own index, so you can keep searches isolated and fast.
Bringing It All Together
Batch-scanning documents into a folder transforms document AI from a one-off tool into a personal document assistant. You're no longer limited to single-document analysis. You can ask complex questions across dozens of files, get cited answers, and maintain privacy because everything indexes locally without cloud uploads.
This is especially powerful when combined with MyBenAI's broader RAG capabilities. Learn more about how on-device RAG works and why it matters for privacy. If you're interested in the mechanics of document processing, check out how OCR extracts text from photos locally. And for specific use cases like receipts and invoices, see how to analyze receipts and invoices with local vision AI.
Ready to organize and index your document collection? Download MyBenAI for $2, create a folder, and start batching your documents. Your private knowledge base is now searchable, and you're in complete control.