NaifJs, a simple state-machine based dialog manager

NaifJs is a simple state-machine based (task-oriented) dialog manager micro-framework for nodejs developers.

The project consists in:

• A run-time dialog manager, as a module to be embedded as part of a container dialog system
• A micro-framework development environment (naif command line program) to create and quickly test dialogues.

Concepts

Naifjs is based on a specific conceptual model and a domain specific language (DSL) I conceived, implementing multi-turn contextual dialogues as "state machines", graphs of internal states.

Following paragraph introduces main concepts and naming conventions. I define what is a dialog system, a dialog manager, a single dialog unit, the end multi-dialog application:

• Dialog system

  • Stateful multi-turn dialogues
  • Architecture

• State-machine based dialog manager

  • Dialogue as a state-machine
  • State tracker

• What is a dialog unit

  • Dialog Unit
  • Coding a dialogue with a javascript domain specific language
  • Requests and responses

• Application

  • Dialog application
  • Sessions

Documentation

The full documentation is available here.

Installation

The package contains command line interface program naif, so you must install the npm package as global:

• use npm package manager repo

  $ npm install -g naifjs
  

• or download this github repo:

  $ git clone https://github.com/solyarisoftware/naifjs
  $ cd naifjs && npm link
  

Application Programming interface and command line tools

API library

NaifJs act as an API library of functions to be called by a main nodejs program. See:

• API cheat sheet: list of available functions
• Application examples some application examples
• Documentation content index some application examples
• Workflow design/development phases

Command line tools

The NaifJs API are foundation for a micro-framework development environment (the naif command line program) to create the end application, generate dialog units skeleton code and quickly test dialogues:

• naif is the main command line program
• naif init initializes project directory
• naif generate generate the code skeleton of a dialog unit
• naif show for a given project, lists all dialog units and relative states
• naif shell test a dialog unit using the command line interface
• naif telegram test a dialog unit, setting up on the fly a telegram bot for the purpose

Discussion / How to contribute

• Pros and cons
• Food for thought
• BackStory
• Acknowledgments
• How to contribute
• To do

Status

Currently the project is just a proof of concept, not ready for production. The software made is just a prototype, in alpha stage.

License

MIT (c) Giorgio Robino

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