lex-chat

A simple CLI to chat with an Amazon Lex Chatbot - great for developing and debugging! The perfect companion to the Lex Starter Kit.

Introduction

This guide covers how to use the tool, as well as how to develop for it and extend it.

• Usage
• Developer Guide
  • Diagnostics
• Troubleshooting
  • No Bots Found
• TODO

Usage

Install with npm:

npm install -g lex-chat

Run it up:

lex-chat

All available bots will be listed, choose the one you want to chat to then chat away!

Developer Guide

Run it:

npm start

Debug it:

npm run debug

Publish it:

npm version patch # or minor/major
git push --follow-tags
npm publish

Diagnostics

For extra diagnostics, use the DEBUG environment variable:

DEBUG=lex-chat lex-chat

This will output additional low-level data if needed. This is powered by the powerful debug library.

Troubleshooting

Some troubleshooting tips for common issues are below.

No Bots Found

If you see the following message:

Then the tool cannot find any Lex bots on your AWS account. Make sure the AWS CLI is setup to connect to the correct account. Verify your account with:

aws sts get-caller-identity

Which should show you the current AWS account your configuration is targeting.

If you need to create a bot, try the lex-starter-kit project.

TODO

Some notes on key next steps for the big refactor:

• If no bots, show a more helpful interface, possibly link to the lex starter kit? Even offer the option to create one?
• For debugging, when we get an intent back, we can see what the intent is and get the lambda logs
• Show a demo/screenshot with a broken lambda function
• Show bot version in list?