Botpress NLU ⚡

Botpress NLU is a Botpress module that adds NLU capatibilities to your bot by connecting to the NLU provider of your choice.

🚧 I'm looking for help to support more providers

Provider	🚩 Status
Native (built-in)	✅
LUIS	✅
DialogFlow	Help needed
RASA	✅

We believe NLP/NLU is a commodity, so this package abstracts the provider by providing a standard, clean interface that allows you (and the non-technicals) to easily edit the NLU data within Botpress.

With Botpress NLU,

• You own your data
• You can seamlessly switch to another NLP provider
• (soon) You can continously train your bot on misunderstood phrases
• (soon) You can share and import open-source, community-curated intents & entities

Installation

⚠️ This module only works with the upcoming Botpress X.

• Install the module yarn add botpress-nlu
• Configure a provider (see below)

Usage

1. You need to chose a Provider (currently luis or rasa or native)
2. Set the provider config to either luis or rasa
3. Configure the provider

Global Configuration (source)

Key	Environment Variable	Required	Default
provider	NLU_PROVIDER	Yes*	native
intentsDir	NLU_INTENTS_DIR	Yes	./intents
entitiesDir	NLU_ENTITIES_DIR	Yes	./entities

'*': Provider is one of rasa, luis or native

Standard NLU Object (event.nlu)

Botpress NLU will instrument incoming events by providing a standardized object with the structure below.

Path	Description	Supported by
nlu.intent.name	The name of the classified intent	LUIS, RASA
nlu.intent.confidence	Confidence of the classification, between 0 and 1, higher the better	LUIS, RASA
nlu.intent.provider	The provider that provided the classification	LUIS, RASA
nlu.entities[i].name	The name of the extracted entitiy	-
nlu.entities[i].type	The type of entity that was extracted	LUIS, RASA
nlu.entities[i].value	The normalized value of the extracted entity	LUIS, RASA
nlu.entities[i].original	The original (raw) value of the extracted entity	RASA
nlu.entities[i].confidence	The provider that extracted the entity	LUIS, RASA
nlu.entities[i].position	The position where it was found in the input string (start position)	LUIS, RASA
nlu.sentiment	TBD	-
nlu.language	TBD	-

Providers – Features Matrix

Provider	Intent Classification	Entity Exraction	Scopes (coming soon)
LUIS	✅	✅	❌
RASA	✅	✅	❌
Native	✅	❌	❌

LUIS

LUIS Specific Configuration (source)

Key	Environment Variable	Required
luisAppId	NLU_LUIS_APP_ID	Yes
luisProgrammaticKey	NLU_LUIS_PROGRAMMATIC_KEY	Yes
luisAppSecret	NLU_LUIS_APP_SECRET	Yes
luisAppRegion	NLU_LUIS_APP_REGION	No (default is westus)

LUIS Caveats

There are some entities that LUIS doesn't support in some languages, make sure that the language you are using supports the entities you are using in Botpress (this module doesn't do this check for you).

LUIS FAQ

I get an error when syncing my model (click to see)

Make sure that:

• You have enough labels (min 2) for the intent
• The entities you are using are supported by your app's language

RASA

Botpress NLU will create and train and maitain your projects and models automatically for you.

Note: By default, Botpress creates separate projects for development and production environment, e.g. dev__botpress__all and prod__botpress__all.

RASA Specific Configuration (source)

Key	Environment Variable	Required
rasaEndpoint	NLU_RASA_URL	No (default is http://localhost:5000/)
rasaToken	NLU_RASA_TOKEN	No (none by default)
rasaProject	NLU_RASA_PROJECT	No (default is botpress)

Contributing

The best way to help right now is by helping with the exising issues here on GitHub and by reporting new issues!

License

Botpress is dual-licensed under AGPLv3 and the Botpress Proprietary License.

By default, any bot created with Botpress is licensed under AGPLv3, but you may change to the Botpress License from within your bot's web interface in a few clicks.

For more information about how the dual-license works and why it works that way please see the FAQS.