intent-parser

:interrobang::bangbang: Intent parser

An intent parser designed for Project Abigail.

Philosophy

This intent parser uses pattern matching. The parsing operates in 3 different stages:

• Cleaning
• Parsing
• Refining

All of these stages are promises based to make it possible to handle asynchronous code, although at the moment all the code is synchronous.

Cleaning

In order to ease the writing of new patterns, a cleaning step takes place. It aims at reducing the complexity of sentences while preserving their meanings.

Consider the following phrases:

Hey, can you please let me know when am I free?
Can you please let me know when I'm free?
Please let me know when I'm free.

They all can be simplified to:

Let me know when I am free.

It becomes easier to write new patterns without worrying about supporting things like contractions (I'm and I am). Only the full forms (I am) are retained and should be used in patterns.

Parsing

The parsing and refining philosophy was inspired by Chrono.

The parsing attempts to identify semantical components of the phrase. Several passes are applied successively. Each of these passes have a single focus and try to extract things like temporal notions, people or actions.

During that phase the logic is kept to a minimum.

Refining

The refining phase attempts to make sense out of the elements extracted during the parsing.

If a person, a time and an action were extracted from a sentence, it is probably a request for creating a new reminder.

On the other hand, if only a person and a time were extracted and the input looks like a question then it is likely a query about someone's activity.

Build

$ npm run build

Unit tests

$ npm test