botbook/src/04-basic-scripting

Chapter 4: BASIC Scripting

Why BASIC?

In 1964, John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz created BASIC with a revolutionary idea: programming should be for everyone. Today, General Bots brings this philosophy to the AI era.

With BASIC + LLM, you write:

TALK "What's your name?"
HEAR name
poem = LLM "Create a heartfelt poem for " + name
TALK poem

Not 50 lines of boilerplate.

The Core Keywords

Just SEVEN main keywords power everything:

Keyword	Purpose	Example
TALK	Output	TALK "Hello!"
HEAR	Input	HEAR name AS NAME
USE KB	Knowledge	USE KB "docs"
USE TOOL	Functions	USE TOOL "weather"
GET	Data	GET "api/users"
IF/THEN	Logic	IF age >= 18 THEN ...
FOR/NEXT	Loops	FOR i = 1 TO 10 ...

Your First Tool

In the LLM world, you write tools that AI can use:

' enrollment.bas - An LLM-callable tool
PARAM name AS STRING LIKE "John Smith" DESCRIPTION "Full name"
PARAM email AS STRING LIKE "john@example.com" DESCRIPTION "Email"
PARAM course AS STRING LIKE "Introduction to AI" DESCRIPTION "Course"

DESCRIPTION "Enrolls a student in a course"

SAVE "enrollments.csv", name, email, course, NOW()
TALK "Enrolled " + name + " in " + course

The LLM handles the conversation. You define the action.

Everyone Can Program

You don't need:

• A computer science degree
• Years of experience
• Understanding of algorithms

You just need:

• An idea
• 10 minutes to learn BASIC
• Creativity

Getting Started

Time	Goal
Minute 1	TALK "Hello, world!"
Minute 5	Add HEAR and LLM
Day 1	Production-ready bot

Documentation Guide

Document	Purpose
Basics	Core LLM-first concepts
Keywords Reference	Complete keyword list
Templates	Real-world examples
Universal Messaging	Multi-channel support

Keyword Categories

• Core: TALK, HEAR
• Context: SET CONTEXT, USE KB
• Memory: GET/SET BOT MEMORY, GET/SET USER MEMORY
• Data: GET, SAVE, FIND
• HTTP: POST, PUT, DELETE
• Files: READ, WRITE, UPLOAD

The Philosophy

BASIC in General Bots isn't about controlling conversation flow - it's about providing tools and context that LLMs use intelligently.

Write simple tools. Let AI handle the complexity.

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"The beauty of BASIC lies not in what it can do, but in who it enables to do it."