Introduction to interfaces

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Overview

Interfaces in the Botpress SDK establish standardized contracts that integrations must implement to enable extra features and capabilities. For example, an integration might implement the hitl (human-in-the-loop) interface to support human agent intervention, or the typing-indicator interface to use typing indicators provided by the external service.

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Interface Definition

Each interface is defined through an Interface Definition that specifies the contract integrations must fulfill.

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Key Components of Interface Definitions

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Events

Interfaces can define events that integrations must support. These events establish a consistent model for how activities are communicated to bots, regardless of the underlying external service.

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Actions

Interfaces can specify actions that integrations must provide. These actions define standardized operations that bots can invoke across different integrations that implement the same interface.

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Channels

Interfaces can define communication channel requirements that integrations must implement.

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Entities

Entities define standardized data structures for an interface. They:

• Establish common data models across different integrations
• Allow integrations to extend and customize the base entity

Actions and events defined by an interface may consume or produce these entities.

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Component Renaming

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Benefits of Interfaces

Interfaces provide significant benefits to the Botpress ecosystem:

• Consistency: Bots can interact with many external services through a standardized approach
• Reusability: Plugins can build upon interfaces instead of individual integrations
• Adaptability: Integrations can fulfill interface requirements while maintaining the appropriate terminology for their external service
• Extensibility: New integrations can quickly provide established functionality by implementing existing interfaces