Step-by-Step tutorial to create your first Rasa Chatbot

Rasa Chatbots have been trending lately. Rasa is one of the most effective and time-efficient tools to build complex chatbots in minutes. It is based on natural language understanding, dialogue management and interactions. Using Rasa, it becomes easier to build conversational AI and improve it over time.

Rasa is an open-source machine learning framework for automated text and voice-based conversations. Understand messages, hold conversations, and connect to messaging channels and APIs.

Follow the steps given below to develop your first conversational chatbot :

Step 1:

Make sure python is installed. Check by typing ‘python — version’ in your terminal.

python --version

Step 2:

I personally use anaconda and install all my dependencies into the environment I create there.

(Optional — To create a virtual environment.)

a) Creating a folder called rasa-project

 mkdir rasa-project

b) cd into the project

cd rasa-project

c)Create the virtual environment

 python3 -m venv ./venv
 source ./venv/bin/activate

Step 3:

Time to install Rasa! It can be done easily using the command below.

pip install rasa

Step 4:

Type the following command in your terminal to create a basic starter project.

 rasa init  

Step 5 :

After rasa init is entered in your terminal. The question ‘Do you want to train an initial model’ is raised. Enter Y.

A basic mood bot will be trained.

The question ‘Do you want to speak to the trained assistant on the command line’ will be raised. Enter Y.

Now you can talk to your bot using the command line!

Congratulations! You have successfully developed your first Rasa Chatbot hopefully! If not feel free to ask your queries in the comments and I will gladly answer them. So much can be done using rasa. This is just the beginning, a drop in the ocean. It’s gonna be a fun journey. Have fun!