Whole (or most recent part of) room chat as context

[CybotTM]

Hi,

i got that baibot get reply-chains and threads as context.

But i couldn't figure out, if it is possible to configure the bot to also have the room conversation (or X last messages/events) as context?
But from what I understood, this is currently not possible via given config options, right?

2 use cases:

User do not use reply-chains or threads as they should :-( ... users

I want to have the option that the bot stays in the channel, not opening threads. For rooms with a very specific topic there is no need for threads or reply-chains. But this requires the bot to know the past room chat messages.

Thanks for your work. Love it.

[spantaleev]

This is possible, but somewhat tricky.

Perhaps it could use a different invocation syntax (e.g. !bai weigh-in 10 What do you think?) which:

• explicitly signals to the bot that it should weigh-in on the whole conversation
• explicitly tells it how many messages it should process

This special command should only be invokable by authorized bot users.

Another question that remains to be answered is: should the bot consider messages from non-bot-users (like it does for on-demand mentions in threads and reply-chains - see on-demand involvement) or should it only consider messages from bot users? Or should this behavior be configurable?

The tentative syntax above (e.g. !bai weigh-in 10 What do you think?) is somewhat complex and cryptic though (reminding of BASIC), I think.

Perhaps the limit parameter (the 10 value in the example above) could be made optional and default to something reasonable if it's missing. The simpler syntax could then become !bai weight-in What do you think?)

---

Alternatives to the weigh-in word (as proposed by baibot itself and reviewed by me) are:

• recap
  • sounds like a command that should be invoked without arguments (or only with a limit argument), which does a recap/summary of the conversation. It doesn't hint that the bot would be responding with its own "thoughts"
• summarize
  • obviously sounds like a summarization command. It doesn't hint that the bot would be responding with its own "thoughts"
• overview
  • also sounds like a summarization command. It doesn't hint that the bot would be responding with its own
• catch-up
  • Hmm..
• review
  • Hmm..
• check-in
  • Not bad.. Like weigh-in. The - maybe a bit problematic (annoying to type)
  • Hopefully it's not confused with doing a location check-in or something of this sort.
• reflect
  • Hmm..
• chime-in
  • Not bad.. Like weigh-in. The - maybe a bit problematic (annoying to type)
• gather
  • Hmm.. Gather what? People?
• respond
  • Respond to what? To who? With what context? A bit odd, maybe
• participate
  • Hmm.. This sounds like it what we want. A bit longer.
• join
  • Hmm.. Sounds like the bot is told to join a room, not "join-in on this conversation here"
• say
  • !bot say What do you think? doesn't sound too bad. !bot say 10 What do you think? is somewhat more cryptic and reminds me of BASIC even more. It also makes me think you're asking the bot to say something
• step
  • I guess the idea is to have the bot "step into the conversation", but this may be cryptic
• thoughts
  • The goal is to say "baibot, what are your thoughts about this conversation here?"
  • Not sure if that's clear though.
  • If named like this, maybe we don't even need to add a manual "prompt" to the bot. A !bai thoughts ^10 command could share the bot's response to the last 10 messages (maybe this ^ caret is hard to type though and may be optional). !bai thoughts is even shorter and could use some default limit

For now, I'm leaning toward thoughts, because it seems relatively short, lacks dashes, is descriptive enough and easy-to-use (no need for a prompt question even).

While !bai weigh-in or !bai weigh-in ^15 (or !bai weigh-in 15) are equally good, I'm not sure I like that dash there. We could get rid of the dash (weighin) as well, but this seems wrong.

---

I have also not looked into how the implementation would look like and and how efficient it could be made to be.

[CybotTM]

Using a specific command seems reasonable.
There may even more commands which may take the chat history into context.

About the history length, I also think it should be optional to add the length, and have a default value configured.

About the command name, for my usecase, "thoughts" would be a good option. With an optional question/query behind it.

Maybe it would also be possible to let the bot decide, whether he has something valuable to add or not - of course configurable. ("You are a helpful assistant, which listens in the background, and adds information or help if they are required") ;-)