RAMUkaka

Ramukaka, stylized as RAMUkaka, is the affectionate name for the chatbot in use at Agility Roots.

About the name:

RAMU stands for Robotic Automated Monotony Undoer.
kaka is an Indian vernacular term used for an elderly uncle or sometimes, a respected helper.

How to run

The instructions below tell you how to get your own instance of RAMUkaka running on your own technology stack.

1. Satisfy Prerequisites

What?	Version?	Why?
OS	Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit (preferred)	`RAMUkaka` has been tested only on Ubuntu.
Python	3+ (3.5.2 recommended)	`RAMUkaka` uses Errbot as its bot framework, which supports Python 3.
`pipenv`	Latest (Install Instructions)	Errbot installation is recommended using a `virtualenv`, so `pipenv` was the natural option. If you don't know what the above means, read about Pipenv first.

Note

In case you're wondering, Python 3 can coexist with Python 2.
Some awareness of Python ecosystem is needed to get things running and troubleshoot.

2. Configure Connectivity

RAMUkaka can connect to the following services, so you need accounts you can use, and need to configure each service separately.

What?	What needs to be done?
Slack	Follow the instructions for creating a Bot token for Errbot.
AWS	Create an AWS account if not already present; then create a "Bot" IAM user for `RAMUkaka`. It is highly recommended that you set a restricted policy for this user; this limits the resources available to this IAM user and prevents misuse (for e.g. you can restrict the bot IAM user to a certain region or certain instance types).

3. Set environment

RAMUkaka reads the following configuration from Environment Variables.

AWS Connectivity

ERRBOT_AWS_KEYPAIR_NAME # an AWS keypair
ERRBOT_AWS_DEFAULT_REGION # AWS region where RAMUkaka will work
ERRBOT_AWS_SECRET_KEY # AWS secret key
ERRBOT_AWS_ACCESS_KEY # AWS access key
ERRBOT_AWS_ACCOUNT_ID # account ID for AWS

Slack Connectivity

ERRBOT_SLACK_TOKEN # Slack Token

4. Initialize

Fork or clone this repository on a laptop or server that satisfies the above requirements.
CD to the ramukaka directory.
This directory is a pipenv environment so cd to this directory and run:

pipenv install

The above command installs the dependencies mentioned in the Pipfile. To load these dependencies you need to run:

pipenv shell

This creates a new shell process for you where you can start Errbot: just run errbot.

Run Errbot

Run Errbot (local shell): Run errbot -T.
Run Errbot (connecting to Slack): Run errbot.
Exit Errbot console: Ctrl-D or Ctrl-C

About The Toolstack

We use the following toolstack to implement RAMUkaka.

Tool	Why?
Errbot	The Bot framework, based on Python
spaCy	For NLP and ML implementation within `RAMUkaka`
Apache libcloud	Python connectivity to any virtualization provider.
`py.test`	Test Cases for the bot.

Testing

References

Errbot

Testing Errbot: http://errbot.io/en/latest/user_guide/plugin_development/testing.html
Errbot: plugin development: http://errbot.io/en/latest/user_guide/plugin_development/development_environment.html
Errbot Getting Started: http://errbot.io/en/latest/index.html
http://errbot.io/en/latest/user_guide/setup.html
http://errbot.io/en/latest/user_guide/configuration/slack.html
config.py template: https://github.com/errbotio/errbot/blob/master/errbot/config-template.py
AWS plugin for errbot adapter from https://github.com/jvasallo/err-plugins/blob/master/err-aws/aws.py

Apache libcloud

API Docs and Examples

anadimisra / ramukaka

readme