Chatbot Project in Python

Project Overview

This chatbot is built for college-level demonstration but designed like a real mini-product: clean folder structure, editable dataset, confidence threshold, and logs for debugging. You can extend it into a web chatbot later.

Key Features

• Intent-based replies using patterns and responses from JSON
• Smart fallback using TF-IDF similarity (no heavy deep learning required)
• Configurable confidence threshold to reduce wrong answers
• Easy customization: add new intents without changing code
• Conversation loop with exit commands

Why this project is new

Most “chatbot projects” online are either only rule-based (fails on real user typing), or they jump straight to deep learning (heavy setup, slow, not easy for viva). This project is new in the sense that it stays lightweight but still feels intelligent: it combines intent matching with a similarity fallback so even if a user writes a sentence differently, the bot can still respond in a relevant way. Also, your dataset remains 100% in your control, so it is safer for demos.

Architecture (How it works)

1. Load intents.json (tags, patterns, responses).
2. Preprocess patterns and build a TF-IDF vectorizer.
3. User message is vectorized and compared with all patterns.
4. If similarity score ≥ threshold → reply from matched intent.
5. Else → fallback response (ask rephrase / show help).

Feature Table

Folder Structure

chat-bot/
  ├─ chatbot.py
  ├─ intents.json
  ├─ requirements.txt
  └─ README.md

Source Code

1) intents.json

Customize this dataset as you want. Add more intents for your domain (college, banking, shopping, etc.).

{
  "intents": [
    {
      "tag": "greeting",
      "patterns": ["hi", "hello", "hey", "good morning", "good evening"],
      "responses": ["Hello! How can I help you?", "Hi there, tell me what you need.", "Hey! What's up?"]
    },
    {
      "tag": "about",
      "patterns": ["what is this project", "tell me about this chatbot", "project overview"],
      "responses": ["This is a Python chatbot using intents + similarity fallback.", "It is a lightweight chatbot built for fast demos."]
    },
    {
      "tag": "features",
      "patterns": ["what are the features", "features of chatbot", "what can you do"],
      "responses": ["I can answer based on intents.json and also handle similar sentences using TF-IDF.", "I support intents, thresholding, and safe fallback responses."]
    },
    {
      "tag": "exit",
      "patterns": ["bye", "exit", "quit", "goodbye"],
      "responses": ["Bye! Take care.", "Goodbye. See you again.", "Exiting. Have a nice day."]
    }
  ],
  "fallback_responses": [
    "I didn't understand that clearly. Can you rephrase it?",
    "I am not sure about that. Try asking in a simpler way.",
    "Sorry, I don't have an answer for this yet. You can add it in intents.json."
  ]
}

2) requirements.txt

scikit-learn==1.5.2

3) chatbot.py

import json
import random
import sys
from dataclasses import dataclass
from pathlib import Path
from typing import Dict, List, Tuple

from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.metrics.pairwise import cosine_similarity


@dataclass
class Intent:
    tag: str
    patterns: List[str]
    responses: List[str]


class ChatBot:
    def __init__(self, intents_path: str, threshold: float = 0.35, debug: bool = True):
        self.intents_path = Path(intents_path)
        self.threshold = float(threshold)
        self.debug = bool(debug)

        self.intents: List[Intent] = []
        self.fallback_responses: List[str] = []

        # Flattened patterns store (pattern_text, tag)
        self.pattern_index: List[Tuple[str, str]] = []

        # ML components
        self.vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer(lowercase=True, stop_words=None)
        self.pattern_matrix = None

        self._load_intents()
        self._build_index()

    def _load_intents(self) -> None:
        if not self.intents_path.exists():
            raise FileNotFoundError(f"intents file not found: {self.intents_path}")

        data = json.loads(self.intents_path.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))

        intents_raw = data.get("intents", [])
        self.fallback_responses = data.get("fallback_responses", ["Sorry, I don't understand."])

        self.intents = []
        for item in intents_raw:
            self.intents.append(
                Intent(
                    tag=item.get("tag", "unknown"),
                    patterns=item.get("patterns", []),
                    responses=item.get("responses", []),
                )
            )

    def _build_index(self) -> None:
        self.pattern_index = []
        for intent in self.intents:
            for p in intent.patterns:
                p_clean = p.strip()
                if p_clean:
                    self.pattern_index.append((p_clean, intent.tag))

        patterns_only = [p for p, _ in self.pattern_index]
        if not patterns_only:
            raise ValueError("No patterns found in intents.json")

        self.pattern_matrix = self.vectorizer.fit_transform(patterns_only)

    def _get_intent_by_tag(self, tag: str) -> Intent:
        for intent in self.intents:
            if intent.tag == tag:
                return intent
        return Intent(tag="unknown", patterns=[], responses=[])

    def predict_tag(self, user_text: str) -> Tuple[str, float]:
        user_text = (user_text or "").strip()
        if not user_text:
            return "unknown", 0.0

        user_vec = self.vectorizer.transform([user_text])
        scores = cosine_similarity(user_vec, self.pattern_matrix)[0]

        best_idx = int(scores.argmax())
        best_score = float(scores[best_idx])

        best_tag = self.pattern_index[best_idx][1]
        return best_tag, best_score

    def reply(self, user_text: str) -> str:
        tag, score = self.predict_tag(user_text)

        if self.debug:
            print(f"[debug] tag={tag} score={score:.3f}")

        if score >= self.threshold:
            intent = self._get_intent_by_tag(tag)
            if intent.responses:
                return random.choice(intent.responses)

        return random.choice(self.fallback_responses)

    def run_cli(self) -> None:
        print("ChatBot started. Type 'exit' / 'bye' to stop.")
        while True:
            try:
                user = input("\nYou: ").strip()
            except (KeyboardInterrupt, EOFError):
                print("\nExiting...")
                return

            if not user:
                print("Bot: Please type something.")
                continue

            # Quick exit check
            if user.lower() in {"exit", "quit", "bye", "goodbye"}:
                print("Bot:", self.reply("bye"))
                return

            print("Bot:", self.reply(user))


def main():
    intents_file = "intents.json"
    threshold = 0.35
    debug = True

    # Optional CLI args: python chatbot.py intents.json 0.4
    if len(sys.argv) >= 2:
        intents_file = sys.argv[1]
    if len(sys.argv) >= 3:
        threshold = float(sys.argv[2])

    bot = ChatBot(intents_path=intents_file, threshold=threshold, debug=debug)
    bot.run_cli()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Setup & Run (Windows / Linux / macOS)

Step 1: Clone or create folder

mkdir chat-bot
cd chat-bot

Put these files inside the folder: chatbot.py, intents.json, requirements.txt

Step 2: Create virtual environment

# Windows
python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

# Linux / macOS
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Step 3: Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Step 4: Run the chatbot

python chatbot.py

Optional: Tune threshold

If chatbot answers wrongly, increase threshold. If it replies fallback too much, decrease it.

python chatbot.py intents.json 0.45

How to Customize for Your College Project

• Add 10–20 intents for your project domain (library, hospital, banking, placement help, etc.).
• Keep patterns realistic: include short + long questions.
• For each intent, add at least 3–6 responses to avoid repeating same reply.
• Test with wrong spellings and adjust threshold a bit.

Common Viva Questions (Add these in your report)

1. What is the difference between a rule-based chatbot and an NLP-based chatbot?
2. Why did you use TF-IDF similarity and what are its limitations?
3. What is the role of the confidence threshold and how do you decide its value?

Conclusion

This Python chatbot project is simple to run, easy to explain in viva, and still feels smart because of the similarity fallback. If you want, you can extend it into a Flask web app, connect it to a database, or build an admin panel to edit intents from a UI.

If you are publishing this on your site, you can internally link it to your other posts like: Python Projects, Machine Learning Projects, Final Year Projects.

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