Students often hesitate to ask questions related to career, mental health, or academics. FRIENDly acts as a companion chatbot that answers in a supportive, simple, and concise manner.
The project offers:
A web-based interface built with Streamlit.
Interactive chat-like experience with session memory.
Customizable design (light sky-blue chat bubbles for readability).
Acts as a student-friendly buddy
Provides short and supportive answers (≤ 150 characters)
Clean and simple chat interface
Maintains chat history within a session
Powered by Google Gemini 2.5 Flash model
Environment variable support for secure API key storage
Once deployed, you can access FRIENDly via a browser.
Run it locally and open:
You’ll see:
Input field to ask questions
Chat history displayed like a messaging app
Bot responses with a typing indicator
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Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/D-Groot/Firstchatbot.git cd FirstChatbot
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Create and activate a virtual environment python -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate # Mac/Linux venv\Scripts\activate # Windows
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Install dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt
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Set up environment variables
Create a .env file in the project root and add your Google Gemini API key:
GEMINI_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
- Run the app streamlit run app.py
Python – Core language
Streamlit – Interactive UI framework
Google Gemini API – AI model for chat
python-dotenv – Environment variable management
Rich – Console styling (optional, for fallback mode)
Add sidebar controls (reset chat, theme switch, quick prompts)
Support for multi-language conversations
Deploy to Streamlit Cloud / Hugging Face Spaces
Save chat history across sessions in a database
Contributions are welcome!
Fork the project
Create a new branch (feature/your-feature)
Commit your changes
Push to the branch
Open a Pull Request
This project is licensed under the MIT License. You’re free to use, modify, and distribute it with attribution.
Made with care to support students everywhere.