Playground for experimenting with the characteristics of a virtual companion to provide assistance in anxiety situations – built on GPT-3. The prototype is a simple web interface that allows the interaction with the companion through text.

Developed at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam as part of the research project DISA (https://disa.fh-potsdam.de/), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

Important note: in this state of development, the prototype should be used for research purposes only. Do not use it in real-life situations.

The virtual companion is called Boo and has the personality of a friendly ghost. The interface allows sharing thoughts or situations. Then Boo, acting like a ghostly councelor, will reframe that thoughts in positive ones with an empowering, friendly voice.

The app builds on:

• OpenAI API quickstart tutorial
• Next.js framework with React

1. If you don’t have Node.js installed, install it from here

2. Clone this repository

3. Navigate into the project directory

   $ cd disa-gotchi-gpt3

4. Install the requirements

   $ npm install

5. Make a copy of the example environment variables file

   $ cp .env.example .env

6. Add your OpenAI API key to the newly created .env file

7. Run the app

   $ npm run dev

You should now be able to access the app at https://localhost:3000