Chat with an historical figure via Pickaxe site

General
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Today I launched http://MennoChat.com. Feedback welcomed!

This is a Pickaxe-driven site designed to enable users to chat with Menno Simons, a former Catholic priest who became a 16th century Anabaptist leader in the Netherlands and Germany. A contemporary of Martin Luther and John Calvin, Menno is regarded as a leader of the “Radical Reformation”. Unlike Luther and Calvin, Menno called for complete separation of church and state. He also emphasized believer’s baptism and taught peace and “turning the other cheek” – despite the fact that thousands of Anabaptists were tortured and killed by church and civil authorities who saw them as a threat to the established order. Menno’s followers were initially known as “Mennists”. Today, there are more than 2 million Mennonites scattered throughout 86 countries who regard Menno Simons as part of their Christian heritage. (I grew up in a Mennonite community in southern PA and am active in a Mennonite congregation in Corning, NY.)

MennoChat.com has a knowledge base of 25 documents with a combined size of about 4 MB, including the complete writings of Menno Simons and a range of historical and biographical information relating to his life and times. Due to the need for as much historical accuracy as possible, I converted all the documents into labelled and chunked CSVs prior to upload using this process:

(1) Convert documents into TXT files;
(2) Insert double carriage returns at desired chunk boundaries;
(3) Use Gemini and a prompt I developed to automatically add AI-generated descriptive titles to all chunks and convert the files into CSV files;
(4) Upload the pre-chunked CSV files into the MennoChat knowledge base.

This was pretty labor-intensive but it helped achieve some additional accuracy in an app where wrong or inappropriate responses can turn users away. I’m happy to share my Gemini prompt if anyone wants to experiment with this approach.

6 Likes
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@Gene: thank you for this!! I clicked over and experimented a bit. Thanks for telling us how you built it as well. This gives me inspiration!

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This reminds me of some of the early work that Pickaxe was doing.

They created a Pickaxe early on that allowed you to converse with Charlie Munger — I think he was still alive when they created it, though he has since passed on.

I also worked with them on another project for an outside client that involved reanimating a few more notable dead celebrities, but I think it got shelved and I probably can’t say anything beyond that about it.