usage.md

📖 Usage

This document covers how to use the bot in a room.

The 🌟 Features page also includes details about how each feature works and can be configured.

💬 Text Generation

This is related to the 💬 Text Generation feature.

If there's a text-generation handler agent configured, the bot may respond to messages sent in the room.

See screenshots of:

• 🖼️ the default Text Generation flow in 1:1 rooms
• 🖼️ the Text Generation flow in multi-user rooms (where the 🗟 Prefix Requirement setting is auto-configured to "required")
• on-demand involvement

Whether the bot responds depends on:

• (🔒 access) whether you're a whitelisted bot 👥 user

• 🛠️ configuration whether there's a configured text-generation handler agent (or a catch-all handler agent). See Mixing & matching models

• (🎨 agent capabilities) whether the configured text-generation (or catch-all) handler agent actually supports text-generation. The provider may lack support for this feature or it may be disabled in the 🤖 agents configuration

• (the 🗟 Prefix Requirement setting) whether a prefix (e.g. !bai) or user mention (e.g. @baibot) is required for messages sent to the room. For multi-user rooms, this setting defaults to "required". See on-demand involvement for details.

Room messages start a threaded conversation where you can continue back-and-forth communication with the bot.

Unless you've enabled the ♻️ Context Management feature, all messages will be sent to the agent's API each time. If the context management feature is enabled, older messages may be dropped.

On-demand involvement

In the following 2 cases, it's useful to involve the bot in conversations on-demand:

1. For multi-user rooms (with the 🗟 Prefix Requirement setting set to "required")
2. In rooms with foreign users (users that are not authorized bot 👥 users)

In these instances, an allowed 👥 user can also provoke the bot to respond to any thread or reply chain by mentioning the bot (e.g. @baibot Hello!). The following screenshots demonstrate this behavior:

• 🖼️ On-demand involvement in the room
• 🖼️ On-demand involvement in a thread (the Alice user in this example is not an allowed user, yet her messages are still considered as part of the conversation context)
• 🖼️ On-demand involvement in a reply chain (the Alice user in this example is not an allowed user, yet her messages are still considered as part of the conversation context)

💡 NOTE: Normally, the bot only considers messages from allowed 👥 Users and ignores all other messages when responding. However, when the bot is explicitly invoked (via mention) in a thread or reply chain, it will consider all messages in the thread and reply chain (even those from foreign users) as part of the conversation context.

🗣️ Text-to-Speech

This is related to the 🗣️ Text-to-Speech feature.

If there's a text-to-speech handler agent configured, the bot may convert text messages sent to the room to audio (voice).

See:

• a 🖼️ screenshot of the bot's Text-to-Speech-only mode

• a 🖼️ screenshot of the bot's Seamless voice interaction mode

By default, the bot:

• will offer tex-to-speech for its own messages which are a response to voice message from your, as part of the Seamless voice interaction feature. This can be adjusted via the 🗣️ Text-to-Speech / 🪄 Bot Messages Flow Type setting.

• does not turn your own text messages to audio (voice). If you'd like for the bot to operate in such a mode, use the 🗣️ Text-to-Speech / 🪄 User Messages Flow Type setting (see Text-to-Speech-only mode).

🦻 Speech-to-Text

This is related to the 🦻 Speech-to-Text feature.

If there's a speech-to-text handler agent configured, the bot may transcribe voice messages sent to the room to text.

See a 🖼️ Screenshot of the default flow for Speech-to-Text and Text-Generation.

The speech-to-text feature triggers automatically by default, but can be adjusted via the 🦻 Speech-to-Text / 🪄 Flow Type setting.

If all your messages are in the same language, you can improve accuracy & latency by configuring the language (see 🦻 Speech-to-Text / 🔤 Language).

🖌️ Image Generation

This is related to the 🖌️ Image Generation feature.

This feature is not configurable at the moment. The configuration (size, quality, style) specified at the 🤖 agent level will be used.

Generating images

Simply send a command like !bai image A beautiful sunset over the ocean and the bot will start a threaded conversation and post an image based on your prompt.

See a 🖼️ Screenshot of the Image Generation feature.

You can then, respond in the same message thread with:

• more messages, to add more criteria to your prompt.
• a message saying again, to generate one more image with the current prompt.

Generating stickers

A variation of generating images is to generate "sticker images".

See a 🖼️ Screenshot of the Sticker Generation feature.

To generate a sticker, send a command like !bai sticker A huge ramen bowl with lots of chashu and a mountain of beansprouts on top.

The difference from generating images is that the bot will:

• generate a smaller-resolution image (currently hardcoded to 256x256) - smaller/quicker, but still good enough for a sticker
• potentially switch to a different (cheaper or otherwise more suitable) model, if available
• post the image directly to the room (as a reply to your message), without starting a threaded conversation

Some models (like OpenAI's Dall-E-3) can only generate larger images (1024x1024, etc., for a higher charge), so we switching to a smaller/cheaper model (like Dall-E-2) is a way to generate a sticker cheaply.