chatbot-util

Utility for generating similar FAQs a la RAG-Fusion in a structured format ready for Google's Conversational Agents

Docs deployed at https://collegiate-edu-nation.github.io/chatbot-util
Docs cover instructions and source code reference

Screenshot

Setup

Must install Ollama before running anything

Start Ollama server
I recommend running Ollama as a system service to avoid running this all the time

ollama serve

Download the LLM
Only needs to be run if mistral has not already been downloaded

ollama pull mistral

Usage

Before the FAQ can be extended by the LLM, download the initial FAQ and a list of teams, employees, phrases to substitute, and answers. An optional configuration file can also be downloaded to enable faster access in the future (see docs for more explanation)

Once downloaded, create the extended FAQ in ~/.chatbot-util/ by

• Launching both the back and frontends (follow one of Nix or Non-Nix)
• Navigating to http://localhost:8080
• Uploading these files
• Clicking Generate

Once the operation completes, the extended FAQ will be available to upload via Google Cloud Console

Nix

nix run github:collegiate-edu-nation/chatbot-util

Leverage the binary cache by adding Garnix to your nix-config

nix.settings.substituters = [ "https://cache.garnix.io" ];
nix.settings.trusted-public-keys = [ "cache.garnix.io:CTFPyKSLcx5RMJKfLo5EEPUObbA78b0YQ2DTCJXqr9g=" ];

Non-Nix

Build the frontend (tested with node v22.20.0)

{
cd front
npm i
npm run build
cd ..
}

Then build and launch the backend (tested with python v3.13.8)

{
cd back
pip install .
chatbot-util
}

Installation

Nix

Add the following to your flake.nix

inputs = {
  nixpkgs = {
    url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
  };
  chatbot-util = {
    url = "github:collegiate-edu-nation/chatbot-util";
    inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
  };
  ...
}

Then, add alc-calc to your packages

For system wide installation in configuration.nix

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  inputs.chatbot-util.packages.${system}.default
];

For user level installation in home.nix

home.packages = with pkgs; [
  inputs.chatbot-util.packages.${system}.default
];

Non-Nix

As this is currently just an internal tool, we don't have plans to streamline the installation process for non-Nix users

However, wrapping the backend's python executable with the location of the built FRONT_DIR before adding it to your path should do the trick. See the postInstall script in package.nix for further reference

Advanced Usage

Verification

After Generate finishes, chatbot-util will automatically display a toast message if any previous entries in the extended FAQ are missing or modified, indicating the new FAQ is not verified

This can be very helpful for identifying regressions when you're just intending on adding new teams, employees, and/or questions

Modifications

To edit the code itself, clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/collegiate-edu-nation/chatbot-util.git

Modify src as desired and add the changes
The build and format scripts will be helpful here

Parallelism

This app intentionally submits requests to Ollama in a sequential manner as, in my testing, parallelism breaks Ollama's determinism in unpredictable ways

If this isn't important for your use-case, leverage the feat-concurrent-requests branch for an ~80% speedup (this figure was observed on an M2 Pro w/ OLLAMA_NUM_PARALLEL set to 8)

License

GPLv3