Mechanism for storing prompt templates about llm HOT 10 CLOSED

The trickiest thing about these templates is their design.

The simplest form of template is some text with a replacement variable where the user's additional input is pasted in - something like this:

Summarize this: {input}

But there are all sorts of other things to consider:

• How should system prompts be handled? I'd much rather write the above template as a system prompt of Summarize this with the input being sent as the full regular prompt.
• How to support more than one placeholder? Would be neat if you could say llm -t persona -p name Tom -p age 22
• If a template has both a prompt and a system prompt, how are they both stored?

I'm leaning towards YAML for this, because it has neat support for multi-line text blocks.

from llm.

Templates can go in ~/Library/Application Support/io.datasette.llm/templates - each one can be a file.

Will I force them to be YAML files, or can you have one that is pure text if it's a really simple one?

from llm.

I think YAML will do. A YAML file can contain just a string, and it will be treated right unless it happens to contain a colon character or similar:

>>> import yaml
>>> yaml.safe_load("this is just a string")
'this is just a string'
>>> yaml.safe_load("this is just a string: hooray")
{'this is just a string': 'hooray'}
>>> yaml.safe_load("\"this is just a string: hooray\"")
'this is just a string: hooray'

I can explain enough of this in the documentation to avoid people getting caught out.

from llm.

What should I use for the actual variable substitution part of this? I'd like to keep that to the Python standard library if possible.

I'm tempted to just use this:

>>> s = "Summarize: {input}"
>>> s.format(blah='foo')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 'input'
>>> s.format(input='foo')
'Summarize: foo'

Another option is Template strings: https://docs.python.org/3/library/string.html#template-strings

Template strings support $-based substitutions, using the following rules:

• $$ is an escape; it is replaced with a single $.
• $identifier names a substitution placeholder matching a mapping key of "identifier". By default, "identifier" is restricted to any case-insensitive ASCII alphanumeric string (including underscores) that starts with an underscore or ASCII letter. The first non-identifier character after the $ character terminates this placeholder specification.
• ${identifier} is equivalent to $identifier. It is required when valid identifier characters follow the placeholder but are not part of the placeholder, such as "${noun}ification".

>>> from string import Template
>>> t = Template("Summarize: $input")
>>> t.substitute(input="Hello")
'Summarize: Hello'
>>> t.substitute(input2="Hello")
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
KeyError: 'input'

from llm.

OK, I think I'm going to go with $variable substitution using string.Template - and the templates themselves will be YAML files which can contain either a string or a dictionary.

If it's a dictionary it can have prompt: and system: keys for prompt + system templates.

If you just have a system then the prompt will default to $input.

Any other $name variables will be treated as required parameters, passed using -p name value.

from llm.

So a set of commands:

llm templates edit name-of-template # Edit the specified template, using $EDITOR
llm templates list # list available templates
llm templates show name-of-template # show a template
llm templates path # path to the templates directory

from llm.

Templates can also have a model: ... to set the default model for that template.

from llm.

I can use this: https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/8.1.x/utils/#launching-editors

>>> import click
>>> click.edit(filename='/tmp/hello.txt')

from llm.

Idea from:

• #36

Slight twist: what if you want to use another template at the same time?

Might be an argument for supporting combined templates - pass -t multiple times and the result is a combination of those templates - the most recent of each of the prompt, system prompt, logit biases etc.

from llm.

It would be amazing if you could install new templates by installing Python packages - using a plugin hook. Could be a neat way to distribute more follows templates, especially ones that include functions.

from llm.