Training Data Format

The training data for Rasa NLU is structured into different parts:

• common examples
• synonyms
• regex features
• lookup tables

While common examples is the only part that is mandatory, including the others will help the NLU model learn the domain with fewer examples and also help it be more confident of its predictions.

Data Formats

You can provide training data as Markdown or as JSON, as a single file or as a directory containing multiple files. Note that Markdown is usually easier to work with.

Markdown Format

Markdown is the easiest Rasa NLU format for humans to read and write. Examples are listed using the unordered list syntax, e.g. minus -, asterisk *, or plus +. Examples are grouped by intent, and entities are annotated as Markdown links, e.g. [entity](entity name).

## intent:check_balance
- what is my balance <!-- no entity -->
- how much do I have on my [savings](source_account) <!-- entity "source_account" has value "savings" -->
- how much do I have on my [savings account](source_account:savings) <!-- synonyms, method 1-->
- Could I pay in [yen](currency)?  <!-- entity matched by lookup table -->

## intent:greet
- hey
- hello

## synonym:savings   <!-- synonyms, method 2 -->
- pink pig

## regex:zipcode
- [0-9]{5}

## lookup:additional_currencies  <!-- specify lookup tables in an external file -->
path/to/currencies.txt

JSON Format

The JSON format consists of a top-level object called rasa_nlu_data, with the keys common_examples, entity_synonyms and regex_features. The most important one is common_examples.

{
    "rasa_nlu_data": {
        "common_examples": [],
        "regex_features" : [],
        "lookup_tables"  : [],
        "entity_synonyms": []
    }
}

Improving Intent Classification and Entity Recognition

Common Examples

Common examples have three components: text, intent and entities. The first two are strings while the last one is an array.

• The text is the user message [required]
• The intent is the intent that should be associated with the text [optional]
• The entities are specific parts of the text which need to be identified [optional]

Entities are specified with a start and an end value, which together make a python style range to apply to the string, e.g. in the example below, with text="show me chinese restaurants", then text[8:15] == 'chinese'. Entities can span multiple words, and in fact the value field does not have to correspond exactly to the substring in your example.

## intent:restaurant_search
- show me [chinese](cuisine) restaurants

Regular Expression Features

Regular expressions can be used to support the intent classification and entity extraction.

## regex:zipcode
- [0-9]{5}

Lookup Tables

Lookup tables provide a convenient way to supply a list of entity examples. The supplied lookup table files must be in a newline-delimited format.

Normalizing Data

Entity Synonyms

If you define entities as having the same value they will be treated as synonyms. Here is an example of that:

## intent:search
- in the center of [NYC](city:New York City)
- in the centre of [New York City](city)

Generating More Entity Examples

It is sometimes helpful to generate a bunch of entity examples, for example if you have a database of restaurant names. There are a couple of tools built by the community to help with that.

However, creating synthetic examples usually leads to overfitting, it is a better idea to use Lookup Tables instead if you have a large number of entity values.

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