how_to_guides.md

How-To Guides

How to Use Community Features

By default, the toolkit operates without community tools or deployments. To enable them, add the following line to the configuration.yaml file or use the make setup command:

feature_flags.use_community_features: true

How to Add Your Own Model Deployment

To add a custom deployment:

1. Create a deployment file and place it in the /community/model_deployments folder.
2. Implement the function calls from BaseDeployment, similar to existing deployments.
3. Register the deployment in src/community/config/deployments.py.
4. Add the necessary environment variables to the environment template.

For a Cohere private deployment:

• Follow the same steps, copying the Cohere platform implementation.
• Modify the base_url for your private deployment and include any custom authentication steps.

How to Call the Backend as an API

You can run the backend service and interact with it similarly to the Cohere API. Note that streaming and non-streaming endpoints are differentiated as follows:

• Streaming: http://localhost:8000/v1/chat-stream
• Non-streaming: http://localhost:8000/v1/chat

Example API Call for Streaming:

curl --location 'http://localhost:8000/v1/chat-stream' \
--header 'User-Id: me' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "message": "Tell me about the aya model"
}'

How to Add Your Own Chat Interface

The core chat interface is the Coral frontend. To implement your own interface:

1. Use the backend API calls as described above in your implementation.
2. Place your interface code alongside src/community/interfaces/.

How to Add a Connector to the Toolkit

If you have already created a connector, you can utilize it within the toolkit by following these steps:

1. Configure your connector using ConnectorRetriever.
2. Add its definition in community/config/tools.py, following the Arxiv implementation, using the category Category.DataLoader.

You can now use both the Coral frontend and API with your connector.

How to Set Up Web Search with the Toolkit

To integrate Coral with web search, utilize the Tavily_Internet_Search tool by adding your API key to the configuration file. Alternatively, you can implement your own search provider by following these steps.

How to Set Up PDF Upload with the Toolkit

For document uploads in Coral, use File_Upload_LlamaIndex (this requires a Cohere API key in the configuration file). You can also implement a custom document uploader by following the steps here.

How to Create Your Own Tools and Retrieval Sources

The toolkit includes sample tools that you can copy to configure your own data sources, including:

• File Loaders: Parses PDF files and performs RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). Users can upload PDFs in the Toolkit UI.
• Data Loaders: Queries a data source and performs RAG on extracted documents.
• Functions: Includes tools like a Python interpreter and calculator.

For guidance on creating your own tools or adding custom data sources, see the tools and retrieval sources overview.

Theming and Customization

To customize the Coral frontend, modify the theme, color scheme, font, and other styles. Refer to our guide on Theming and Customization.