personal_website_bot

A simple bot to answer questions on my personal website. (In development)

Frontend deployment options

Discussed & prioritized on stream March 19, 2021.

create a droplet (tutorial vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9-s_49pw_8&ab_channel=Rasa)
install Rasa X
while installing, add notice that convos will be seen publically during CDD on the livestream
create rasa x instance
add our assistant to our server via github integration
quick test
create an image of our action server & add to dockerhub (using manual install)
add action server to our rasa x instance
added database to our action server image
update action server image w/ new version of database
TODO:
- NLU insights
- share bot & get user data & do CDD

1st: Rasa X (server, digital ocean?): share using chatbot sharing feature for early CDD & link where appropraite
- pro: good proof of concpet, can use for inital softlaunch/early CDD, link from my website, need to set up Rasa X anyway for CDD/annotation/model management
- con: kicks the can on the front end integration problem, already done it on livestream (double dipping :P)
2nd: twitter - pref. is for convos in the dms, which is definintely possible
- pro: a reasonable place to put the assistant, meeting people who ask ?s where they are, needing an account might help prevent abuse
- con: people need to have a Twitter account (but can add other channels that don't need an account later), need to handle twitter API & TOS; not sure how bots are handleded by that
3rd: Website: host on a new, v. simple webpage
- pro: good proof of concpet, can use for inital softlaunch/early CDD, link from my website, show integration with front end in simple html
- con: kicks the can on the front end integration problem, why build myself when Rasa X will already do this?
4th: Website: Add jekyll plugin (?) to my existing website
- pro: can use w/ existing website, lots of people want to do something similar (but not necessarily w/ jekyll), if i can find a plugin i don't have to do any front end work myself (besides maybe adjusting color)
- con: haven't found a suitable plug in yet, may spend a lot of time searching only the find there's nothing that I can use

Website: Add webchat as raw html to my current website (no idea where that would go??)
- don't know jekyll well enough & don't really want to spend a bunch of time learning
Website: rebuild website from scratch in a framework I know better (blogdown?) so I add a chat window
- not an efficent use of time
Website: shiny somehow + rserver??? will take a lot of custom work but could be useful to other people as well
- would take a lot of futzing, maybe in the future, haven't found anything similar
discord - would have to make one... can provide a widget w/ htm/json widget?
- don't have an existing discord, widget integration is the same as the first website option above
slack - contributor slack?
- rasa contribs probably don't need answers to the questions my assistant can answer

TODONE: how to add image to docker-compose (rather than helm)
- /etc/rasa add image path (on dockerhub) to docker-compose or docker-compose.override.yaml
- to check running dockers = docker ps
- to check logs = docker logs [continer id, get from ps list]
TODO: figure out where your sqlite database is
- to do: host database in different image?
- from chat (ty!): app needs DNS translation (add translation in etc/hosts as localhost). copy sentence in dockerfile when you build the image has to moe the db file inside the image
- from chat: digital ocena managed database?
TODO: add error message if database file not found
TODO: update rasa in docker compose
TODO: write doc strings for our Python functions
TODO: add chitchat to handle polite turns (thank you, goodbye, etc.)
TODO: a way to handle when the bot has no response