# The Rasa Core dialogue engine

**Note**  
This is the documentation for version 0.14.5 of Rasa Core. Make sure you select the appropriate version of the documentation for your local installation!

## What am I looking at?
Rasa is a framework for building conversational software: Messenger/Slack bots, Alexa skills, etc. We'll abbreviate this as a **bot** in this documentation.

## What's cool about it?
Rather than a bunch of `if/else` statements, the logic of your bot is based on a machine learning model trained on example conversations.

That sounds harder than writing a few if statements.
In the beginning of a project, it seems easier to just hard code some logic. Rasa helps you when you want to go past that and create a bot that can handle more complexity. This [blog post](https://medium.com/rasa-blog/a-new-approach-to-conversational-software-2e64a5d05f2a) explains the philosophy behind Rasa Core.

## Can I see it in action?
We thought you'd never ask! You can build a full example without installing anything, just go to the quickstart!