Philosobot

Conversational AI with a Philosophical Twist

Philosobot is a chatbot application built with Blazor Server and integrated with the OpenAI API to simulate conversations with famous philosophical thinkers. Users can select a philosophical “persona” — such as Analytic Philosopher, Continental Philosopher, or Postcolonial Theorist — and engage in guided or open-ended dialogues powered by GPT-3.5.

This project merges philosophy with cutting-edge conversational AI to create an educational and reflective experience. Ideal for students, thinkers, and the curious.

🔧 Tech Stack

• Blazor Server (.NET 7, with .NET 8/9 upgrade planned)
• C# and ASP.NET Core
• OpenAI Chat Completions API integration
• Dependency Injection with service interfaces
• JSON-driven persona configuration
• Shared model layer for chat messages, personas, and bios
• Async/await API communication
• Bootstrap and custom CSS for responsive UI

💡 Features

• Selectable philosophical personas with distinct voices and system prompts
• Persona definitions loaded from personas.json
• Reusable IPersonaService and PersonaService architecture
• OpenAI communication isolated behind IOpenAIChatService
• Shared models for ChatMessage, Persona, and BioEntry
• Trusted bio context loaded from JSON for selected Indigenous philosophers and thinkers
• Live chat experience with persona-specific responses

📷 UI Tour

👋 Welcome Screen

The user lands on a welcoming, minimal page with the Philosobot logo and a brief description of what it does.

🧠 Choose a Persona

Users are guided to select from a list of philosophical personas. Each persona has a name, title, and summary to preview their style of thinking.

💬 Chat Window UI

After choosing a persona, users are taken to a chat interface. The selected persona introduces itself and begins a conversation.

🗨️ Chat in Progress

Messages are styled to distinguish between user and AI. The conversation scrolls naturally, and personas respond in unique tones and styles.

🧠 Architecture Highlights

🧩 Service-Oriented Refactor

Philosobot now separates UI concerns from application logic using dedicated services, interfaces, and shared models.

👤 JSON-Driven Personas

Personas are loaded from personas.json, making the application easier to extend without changing C# code.

⚙️ Dependency Injection

The Blazor components consume services through dependency injection, including IPersonaService and IOpenAIChatService.

💬 Chat Flow

The chat page manages user input and display state while delegating API communication to the chat service.

👤 Persona Definitions

Each persona is defined with a name and system prompt that gives it distinct tone, style, and epistemological tendencies.

⚙️ OpenAI Options

Request settings like temperature and max_tokens to shape tone and verbosity.

📋 List of Personas

Displays available personas with names and short summaries for selection.

💬 ChatMessage Component

Blazor component to render assistant vs user messages with appropriate styling.

🚀 Planned Enhancements

• Editable and user-generated personas
• Chat history persistence (localStorage or database)
• “Memory mode” using longer context windows
• Save and share transcripts
• Mobile optimization

🔗 Links

• GitHub Repository

Want to talk about philosophy, Blazor, or building creative apps with AI? Let’s chat.

Page last updated: June 2025