Snips NLU Integration

Turn raw text into structured meaning with the Jovo Framework integration for the open source natural language understanding service Snips NLU.

Snips NLU is an open source natural language understanding (NLU) library.

Since it is an open source service, you can host Snips NLU on your own servers without any external API calls. You can learn how to set up a server in the official Snips NLU documentation. Jovo also offers an open source repository repository that can be used to run a Snips NLU Python server that supports intent scoping and dynamic entities: jovotech/snips-nlu-server.

You can use the Jovo Snips NLU integration for projects where you receive raw text input that needs to be translated into structured meaning to work with the Jovo intent structure. Platforms like the Jovo Core Platform or Jovo Web Platform (e.g. in conjunction with the Jovo Web Client), Facebook Messenger, and Google's Business Messages are some examples where this would work.

Learn more in the following sections:

• Installation
• Configuration
• Entities
• Intent Scoping

You can install the plugin like this:

$ npm install @jovotech/nlu-snips

NLU plugins can be added to Jovo platform integrations. Here is an example how it can be added to the Jovo Core Platform in app.ts:

import { CorePlatform } from '@jovotech/platform-core';
import { SnipsNlu } from '@jovotech/nlu-snips';
// ...

const app = new App({
  plugins: [
    new CorePlatform({
      plugins: [new SnipsNlu()],
    }),
    // ...
  ],
});

The following configurations can be added:

new SnipsNlu({
  serverUrl: 'http://localhost:5000/',
  serverPath: '/engine/parse',
  fallbackLanguage: 'en',
  engineId: '',
  dynamicEntities: { /* ... */ },
}),

• serverUrl and serverPath: The API endpoint where the Snips NLU server can be reached.
• fallbackLanguage: The language that gets used if the request does not come with a language property. Default: en.
• engineId: This ID gets passed to the Snips NLU server. Default: Random uuid.
• dynamicEntities: See more information about dynamic entities below.

• Access Snips Slots
• Dynamic Entities

You can access Snips slots by using the $entities property. You can learn more in the Jovo Model and the $entities documentation.

The Snips slot values are translated into the following Jovo entity properties:

{
  value: rawValue, // what the user said
  resolved: value.value, // the resolved value
  id: value.value, // same as resolved, since Snips doesn't support IDs
  native: { /* raw API response for this slot */ }
}

You can learn more about the Snips slot format in the official Snips documentation.

It is possible to set up Snips NLU to work with dynamic entities.

The Jovo Snips NLU integration automatically parses the entities that are added to the listen object of the output template, and sends them to the Snips NLU server along with the session ID.

The Snips NLU server then trains an updated model just for the intents that use the entities from listen.

This is the configuration for dynamicEntities:

new SnipsNlu({
  // ...
  dynamicEntities: {
    enabled: false,
    serverPath: '/engine/train/dynamic-entities',
    passModels: true;

    // Either use models directory or import model files and
    modelsDirectory: 'models';
    models: [ en ];
  },
}),

• enabled: Setting this to true will enable the training of dynamic entities.
• serverPath: This is the endpoint of the server that handles the training. Uses the same base serverUrl as the main configuration.
• passModels: Since the server trains a new model that includes only the intents that use the dynamic entities, it needs access to the existing language model. You can either modify the server to access them, or pass the models using this NLU integration. If the latter, there are two options:
  • modelsDirectory: Reference the folder that includes all the model files. If you're deploying the app, make sure that the models files are included in the bundle.
  • models: Import the model files and reference them here. This property is prioritized over modelsDirectory if both are used.

Snips provides the ability to prioritize intents when parsing the data. Learn more in the official parse reference.

You can pass a list of intent names by using the listen.intents output property:

{
  message: `Which city do you want to visit?`,
  listen: {
    intents: [ 'CityIntent' ],
  },
}

In the example above, CityIntent will be considered as prioritized intent when the Snips NLU is called.