Role Guide

Role Definition

Roles in AIChat define how the LLM will respond to your input. Each role consists of four fields:

• name: A unique identifier for the role (e.g., translator, grammar-genie).
• prompt: Instructions and context provided to the LLM.
• model: The preferred LLM (e.g. openai:gpt-4o).
• temperature: Controls the creativity and randomness of the LLM's response.
• top_p: Alternative way to control LLM's output diversity, affecting the probability distribution of tokens.

Here's a basic example:

# <aichat-config-dir>/roles.yaml
- name: grammar-genie
  prompt: >
    Your task is to take the text provided and rewrite it into a clear, grammatically correct version while preserving the original meaning as closely as possible. Correct any spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, verb tense issues, word choice problems, and other grammatical mistakes.

Types of Prompts

There are three types of prompts in AIChat:

Embedded Prompt:

• Contains __INPUT__ placeholder, which gets replaced with your input.
• Ideal for concise, input-driven replies.

- name: emoji
  prompt: convert __INPUT__ to emoji

Running aichat -r emoji angry would generate messages:

[
  {"role": "user", "content": "convert angry to emoji"}
]

System Prompt:

• Does not include __INPUT__.
• Sets a general context for the LLM's behavior.

- name: emoji
  prompt: convert my words to emoji

Running aichat -r emoji angry would generate messages:

[
  {"role": "system", "content": "convert my words to emoji"},
  {"role": "user", "content": "angry"}
]

Few-shot Prompt:

• An extension of the system prompt, offering more precise instructions.
• Uses ### INPUT: and ### OUTPUT: to denote user and assistant messages.

- name: code
  prompt: |-
    Provide only code without comments or explanations.
    ### INPUT:
    async sleep in js
    ### OUTPUT:
    ```javascript
    async function timeout(ms) {
      return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
    }

Running aichat -r code echo server in node.js would generate messages:

[
  {"role": "system", "content": "Provide only code without comments or explanations."},
  {"role": "user", "content": "async sleep in js"},
  {"role": "assistant", "content": "```javascript\nasync function timeout(ms) {\n  return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));\n}\n```"},
  {"role": "user", "content": "echo server in node.js"}
]

Role Arguments

Role arguments can be employed to supply extra parameters to the prompt.

- name: convert:json:yaml
  prompt: convert __ARG1__ below to __ARG2__

:json:yaml represents role args. It contains two arguments:

• arg1 json will replace __ARG1__ in the prompt
• arg2 yaml will replace __ARG2__ in the prompt

If we run aichat -r convert:json:yaml, the prompt will be

convert json below to yaml

If we run aichat -r convert:yaml:toml, the prompt will be

convert yaml below to toml

Different role args will generate different prompts.

Built-in Roles

AIChat includes these built-in roles:

• %shell%: Generates shell commands (used by aichat -e)
• %explain-shell%: Explains shell commands (used by aichat -e > explain)
• %code%: Generates code (used by aichat -c)
• %functions%: Attach function declarations of all tools

Built-in role names are always enclosed in %...%. You can override them in roles.yaml.