Warning: This document is for an old version of Rasa Core. The latest version is 0.14.5.

Story Data Format

A training example for the Rasa Core dialogue system is called a story. This is a guide to the story data format.

Note

You can also spread your stories across multiple files and specify the folder containing the files for most of the scripts (e.g. training, visualization). The stories will be treated as if they would have been part of one large file.

Format

Here’s an example from the bAbI data (converted into Rasa stories):

## story_07715946    <!-- name of the story - just for debugging -->
* greet
   - action_ask_howcanhelp
* inform{"location": "rome", "price": "cheap"}  <!-- user utterance, in format intent{entities} -->
   - action_on_it
   - action_ask_cuisine
* inform{"cuisine": "spanish"}
   - action_ask_numpeople        <!-- action that the bot should execute -->
* inform{"people": "six"}
   - action_ack_dosearch

This is what we call a story. A story starts with a name preceded by two hashes ## story_03248462. You can call the story anything you like, but it can be very useful for debugging to give them descriptive names! The end of a story is denoted by a newline, and then a new story starts again with ##.

Checkpoints

You can use > checkpoints to modularize and simplify your training data. Checkpoints can be useful, but do not overuse them. Using lots of checkpoints can quickly make your example stories hard to understand. It makes sense to use them if a story block is repeated very often in different stories, but stories without checkpoints are easier to read and write.

## first story
* hello
   - action_ask_user_question
> check_asked_question

## user affirms question
> check_asked_question
* affirm
  - action_handle_affirmation

## user denies question
> check_asked_question
* deny
  - action_handle_denial

OR Statements

Another way to write shorter stories, or to handle multiple intents the same way, is to use an OR statement. For example if you ask the user to confirm something, and we want to treat the affirm and thankyou intents in the same way. The story below will be converted into two stories at training time. Just like checkpoints, OR statements can be useful, but if you are using a lot of them, it is probably better to restructure your domain and/or intents.

## story
...
  - utter_ask_confirm
* affirm OR thankyou
  - action_handle_affirmation