Navigating the maze of folders that contain a company’s internal files can be a hassle even with the search tools included in most modern collaboration services. A team of Evernote Corp. veterans led by Jack Hirsch, the company’s former engineering head, is tackling the issue.

The team’s startup, Butter.ai Inc., exited stealth mode today with a Slack bot aimed at making locating files faster. The virtual assistant can make documents from Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote and other popular cloud services accessible via a conversational interface. What makes it stand out is the amount of flexibility users have when it comes to wording their requests.

For starters, Butter.ai doesn’t require knowing the name of a file. A worker could ask the bot a question like “where is our latest logo?” and the algorithms under the hood will find the desired version of the graphic asset in question.

When the assistant receives a more general request, it lists all the files that match the user’s description.  If they’re unable to identify the specific document they seek, workers can have the bot ask a colleague for assistance with locating it. Butter.ai is also capable of automatically placing access requests in cases when users doesn’t have permission to view the file they’re after.

The startup said its chatbot can make a significant impact on day-to-day work. In a statement, Hirsch cited internal research as showing that finding a file on average causes a seven-minute interruption when it’s not within immediate reach. Speeding up this process could potentially result in major time savings across a large company, especially given that business files are typically spread out across multiple services.

Butter.ai’s vision is backed by $3 million in venture capital. Notable investors include General Catalyst, early Uber Inc. investor Jason Calacanis and Slack Technologies Inc. The team communications giant actively backs developers building tools for its service through an $80 million fund that was established in 2015.

Image: Butter.ai