Within MindsDB, chatbots are agents connected to some messaging interface.

Creating a chatbot requires an AI agent and a connection to a chat app, like Slack or MS Teams.

Currently, the recommended chat app is Slack. MS Teams will be fully supported soon.

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How to work with chatbots

A chatbot can be created, deleted, queried, and updated. Here is how you can do that using SQL API.

  • Creating a chatbot:

    CREATE CHATBOT my_chatbot
USING
    database = 'my_slack', -- this must be created with CREATE DATABASE
    agent = 'customer_support_agent', -- this must be created with CREATE AGENT
    included_channels = ['support', 'help'], -- Default is all
    excluded_channels = [], -- Default is none
    enable_dms = true,
    is_running = true; -- Default is true

    The parameters include the following:

    • database stores connection to a chat app (like Slack or MS Teams) that should be created with the CREATE DATABASE statement.
    • agent is an AI agent created with the CREATE AGENT command. It consists of an AI model trained with defined data sets.
    • included_channels and excluded_channels are optional and store channel names where the bot will or will not respond.
    • enable_dms is the initially supported mode of talking to a chatbot. A chatbot responds to direct messages.
    • is_running indicates whether or not to start the chatbot upon creation.

    If you want to use Slack in the CREATE CHATBOT syntax, use this method of connecting Slack to MindsDB.

  • Deleting a chatbot:

    DROP CHATBOT my_chatbot;

You can query all chatbots using these commands:

SELECT * FROM chatbots;

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Example

Following the example from here, let’s create a chatbot utilizing the already created agent.

Start by connecting a chat app to MindsDB:

Next, create a chatbot.

CREATE CHATBOT text_to_sql_chatbot
USING
    database = 'my_slack', -- this must be created with CREATE DATABASE
    agent = 'text_to_sql_agent', -- this must be created with CREATE AGENT
    enable_dms = true,
    is_running = true;

To create my_slack and be able to talk to the chatbot via DMs, follow this instruction.

To see how the agent is created, follow this example.