May 2025

Building Your First AI-powered Chatbot with Open Source Tools

ChatbotOpen SourceGuide

You can build a simple, effective chatbot with open tools. Combine an LLM with retrieval and a lightweight UI to answer domain questions.

Start with a minimal stack: a small vector database for document embeddings, an LLM API or open model, and a web front-end.

Chunk your documents, generate embeddings, and index them. On every question, search similar chunks and feed them to the model as context.

Add guardrails: limit prompt length, filter unsafe content, and show sources. Log prompts and responses to refine prompts and retrieval.

Iterate with user feedback. Focus on helpfulness, accuracy, and latency—optimize the slowest steps first.