Start agent with pre-existing message

[joecharm]

Hello,

I wish to create an agent where the first message from the agent is defined. E.g. the user clicks to start a new conversation with a support agent, the initial opening line from the assistant is pre-defined to 'Hello there, how can I help you today?', but this message could change.

Is it possible to inject that message into the start of the conversation? I am using SQL chat history.

This throws an error (No messages in the chat history. It may have been filled with too large a message.)

$opening = 'Hello there, how can I help you today?';

$threadId = Str::uuid();

ChatHistory::create([
      'thread_id' => $threadId,
      'messages' => json_encode([]),
  ]);

$agent = Agent::make($threadId);
$agent->chat(new Message(MessageRole::ASSISTANT, $opening));

Appending the message into the messages array adds the message in but the agent doesn't seem to then have context of the opening line.

[ilvalerione]

It's because you can't start the chat history with an assistant message. The ChatHistory component has a validation process to ensure the chat history is consistent: https://github.com/neuron-core/neuron-ai/blob/2.x/src/Chat/History/AbstractChatHistory.php#L142

It should be enough to put two messages (user and assistant) as the starting point:

$agent->chat([
    new UserMessage('Hi!'),
    new AssistantMessage($opening),
]);

[joecharm]

Thanks for your help, after creating the chat with both messages like so:

$opening = 'Hello there, how can I help you today?';

$agent = Agent::make($threadId);

$agent->chat([
    new UserMessage('Hi'),
    new AssistantMessage($opening)
]);

I get 'Undefined array key "parts" (vendor/neuron-core/neuron-ai/src/Providers/Gemini/HandleChat.php:50)

[joecharm]

It seems Gemini HandleChat expects the content array to always include the 'parts' key but the response seems to include it intermittently

[ilvalerione]

Using your code I don't get any error. Any other context?

[joecharm]

Running it in chatAsync seemed to fix it.

Similar to this, I have a different agent acting as a fictional character. I wish to send context into the chat at different points during a conversation such as 'user opens door' - the character then may or may not provoke conversation. What is best practice to send this to the chat?

[ilvalerione]

You can access the chat history instance of the agent calling resolveChatHistory() from inside or outside the agent, like:

$agent->resolveChatHistory()->addMessage(new Message(...));

But you always need to maintain the consistency of the user/assistant alternation. It's required by the providers, it's not a Neuron limitation.

In the next version of the framework we are working to support message blocks, so you can eventually add more content to the same message overcoming this limitations.