Panel Chat Interface

Panel
1

Hi. I’m having a tough time with this. I have a crewai application I’m building. One version runs great. However I have a second version where I would like to post a question to the screen, pause code execution and ask the user to indicate a preference. This preference would be assigned to a variable named user_preference and then code execution would continue via an if else statement based around the value of the user_preference variable. How can I halt program execution until the user responds?

2

The three strategies I know if is

  • Change the widgets of the ChatInterface or
  • Put widgets into the ChatMessages displayed in the chat interface and then temporarily disable the
    ChatInterface.widgets or
  • Compose your own custom Chat Interface from some of the lower level chat components of Panel like ChatAreaInput, ChatFeed or event ChatMessage.

I tried to find some receipies at Panel Chat Examples without success.

One place to look for inspiration is maybe in some of Yeyu Labs Autogen videos

image

Maybe @ahuang11 has some suggestions or receipies?

3

Change the widgets of the ChatInterface

The below is one strategy you might be able to extend upon.

import panel as pn
import param

pn.extension()

QUESTION_STATE = "Ask Question"
PREFERENCE_STATE = "Ask Preference"

class ChatHandler(param.Parameterized):
    state = param.Selector(default=QUESTION_STATE, objects=[QUESTION_STATE, PREFERENCE_STATE])

    def __init__(self, **params):
        super().__init__(**params)

        self.state = QUESTION_STATE

        self._preference_widget = self._preference_widget = pn.widgets.RadioBoxGroup(options=["blue", "red", "green"], value="blue", inline=True)
        

    def callback(self, contents, user, instance: pn.chat.ChatInterface):
        if self.state == QUESTION_STATE:
            self.state = PREFERENCE_STATE
            instance.widgets=[self._preference_widget]
            return "What is your preference?"
        elif self.state == PREFERENCE_STATE:
            self.state = QUESTION_STATE
            instance.widgets=[pn.chat.ChatAreaInput()]
            return f"Since your preference is {contents} then the answer is ..."

chat_handler = ChatHandler()

pn.chat.ChatInterface(callback=chat_handler.callback).servable()
4

How can I halt program execution until the user responds

This is how I would approach it:

import asyncio
import panel as pn

pn.extension()


async def _prompt_input():
    auto_input = pn.widgets.AutocompleteInput(
        options=["Vanilla", "Chocolate", "Strawberry"]
    )
    inputs = pn.Column("What's your favorite flavor?", auto_input)
    message = chat.send(inputs, user="Assistant", respond=False)
    for i in range(0, 120):
        if auto_input.value:
            message.object = f"Nice! I like {auto_input.value} too!"
        await asyncio.sleep(0.2)
    else:
        message.object = "Seems like you're not interested in ice cream..."


async def callback(message, *args):
    if "ice cream" in message.lower():
        await _prompt_input()
        return
    return f"I don't care about {message}"


chat = pn.chat.ChatInterface(callback=callback)
chat.show()

image
image1424×1181 47.3 KB

5

Another version inspired by Marc’s

import panel as pn
import param

pn.extension()


class PreferenceInput(pn.widgets.CompositeWidget):
    value = param.Parameter()

    def __init__(self, **params):
        super().__init__(**params)

        self._preference_widget = pn.widgets.RadioBoxGroup(
            options=["", "blue", "red", "green"], name="preference"
        )
        pn.bind(self._update_value, self._preference_widget, watch=True)
        self._composite[:] = [
            "What is your preference?",
            self._preference_widget,
        ]

    def _update_value(self, preference):
        self.value = f"My preference is {preference}."
        chat.stream(f"I like {preference} too")
        chat.widgets = [pn.chat.ChatAreaInput()]


def choose_a_color(contents, user, instance):
    if "color" in contents:
        instance.widgets = [preference_input]
        return "What is your preference?"
    return contents


preference_input = PreferenceInput()
chat = pn.chat.ChatInterface(callback=choose_a_color)
chat.show()