Ask HN: Building a simple conversational UI – what libraries should I look at?

[dshah]

I'm looking to build a simple conversational/text UI for an existing application.

Need to support about 20 "commands" (ex: How many visitors did I get last week?).

Considered just creating a Domain Specific Language (many libraries for that), but want to support something closer to natural language.

What libraries should I look at? I'm primarily a Python guy, but am open to other languages.

[petercooper]

Being on Python, you have the great advantage of having access to NLTK :-) http://www.nltk.org/ - it's pretty intense and offers a lot, but also includes some example bots: http://www.nltk.org/api/nltk.chat.html

My personal advice, though, is while you can definitely try to support a more 'natural' type of language, you do want to define fixed formats for commands in your documentation/help so as not to confuse users or encourage them to keep trying all sorts of variations to figure out what magic combo makes your bot work.

[mindcrime]

You might find AIML useful. I don't know much about the state of AIML interpreters in Python, but I'm guessing there is at least one good one.

[sharpshoot]

www.converse.ai has an API you can use. Works cross platform - gives you Slack, SMS, chat etc out the box.