Templated Prompts

note: All built-in prompts may be replaced with templated prompts eventually.

As of 0.0.6, you can use template notes to create your own custom prompts to send to the LLM.

Template notes make use of all of the template language available to SilverBullet.

To be a templated prompt, the note must have the following frontmatter:

tags must include template and aiPrompt
aiprompt object must exist and have a description key
Optionally, aiprompt.systemPrompt can be specified to override the system prompt
Optionally, aiprompt.chat can be specified to treat the template as a multi-turn chat instead of single message
Optionally, aiprompt.enrichMessages can be set to true to enrich each chat message
Optionally, aiprompt.postProcessors can be set to a list of space-script function names to manipulate text returned by the llm

For example, here is a templated prompt to summarize the current note and insert the summary at the cursor:

---
tags:
- template
- aiPrompt

aiprompt:
  description: "Generate a summary of the current page."
---

Generate a short and concise summary of the note below. 

title: {{@page.name}}
Everything below is the content of the note: 
{{readPage(@page.ref)}}

With the above note saved as AI: Generate note summary, you can run the AI: Execute AI Prompt from Custom Template command from the command palette, select the AI: Generate note summary template, and the summary will be streamed to the current cursor position.

Another example prompt is to pull in remote pages via federation and ask the llm to generate a space script for you:

---
tags:
- template
- aiPrompt

aiprompt:
  description: "Describe the space script functionality you want and generate it"
  systemPrompt: "You are an expert javascript developer.  Help the user develop new functionality for their personal note taking tool."
  slashCommand: aiSpaceScript
---

SilverBullet space script documentation:

{{readPage([Space%20Script](!silverbullet.md/Space%20Script.md))}}


Using the above documentation, please create a space-script following the users description in the note below.  Output only valid markdown with a code block using space-script.  No explanations, code in a markdown space-script block only.  Must contain silverbullet.registerFunction or silverbullet.registerCommand.

title: {{@page.name}}
Everything below is the content of the note: 
{{readPage(@page.ref)}}

Template Metadata

As of version 0.4.0, the following global metadata is available for use inside of an aiPrompt template:

page: Metadata about the current page.
currentItemBounds: Start and end positions of the current item. An item may be a bullet point or task.
currentItemText: Full text of the current item.
currentLineNumber: Line number of the current cursor position.
lineStartPos: Starting character position of the current line.
lineEndPos: Ending character position of the current line.
currentPageText: Entire text of the current page.
parentItemBounds: Start and end positions of the parent item.
parentItemText: Full text of the parent item. A parent item may contain child items.
selectedText: Text the user has currently selected.
currentParagraph: Text of the current paragraph where the cursor is located.
smartReplaceType: Indicates the type of content being replaced when using the 'replace-smart' option. Can be 'selected-text', 'current-item', or 'current-paragraph'.
smartReplaceText: The text that will be replaced when using the 'replace-smart' option.

All of these can be accessed by prefixing the variable name with @, like @lineEndPos or @currentLineNumber.

Insert At Options

The insertAt option in the aiprompt frontmatter determines where the generated content will be inserted. The valid options are:

cursor: Inserts at the current cursor position
page-start: Inserts at the beginning of the page
page-end: Inserts at the end of the page
start-of-line: Inserts at the start of the current line
end-of-line: Inserts at the end of the current line
start-of-item: Inserts at the start of the current item (list item or task)
end-of-item: Inserts at the end of the current item
new-line-above: Inserts on a new line above the current line
new-line-below: Inserts on a new line below the current line
replace-line: Replaces the current line with the generated content
replace-paragraph: Replaces the entire paragraph (or item) where the cursor is located with the generated content
replace-selection: Replaces the currently selected text with the generated content. If no text is selected, it behaves like the 'cursor' option
replace-smart: Intelligently replaces content based on context:
- If text is selected, it replaces the selection.
- If no text is selected but the cursor is within a list item or task, it replaces the entire item.
- If neither of the above applies, it replaces the current paragraph.

Replacing content

If the objective is to replace all or a portion of the note's content, the replace-smart option is the best choice. It intelligently selects the most appropriate text to replace based on the cursor's context. If more control is needed, any of the other options can be used.

Note that the replace options will remove existing content before inserting the new content. Make sure there is a backup of any important content before using these options.

Chat-style prompts

As of version 0.3.0, aiprompt.chat can be set to true in the template frontmatter to treat the template similar to a page using AI: Chat on current page.

For example, a summarize prompt could look like this:

---
tags:
- template
- aiPrompt

aiprompt:
  description: "Generate a summary of the current page."
  system: You are an AI Note Summary bot.  Help the user create useful and accurate summaries.
  slashCommand: aisummarychat
  chat: true
---

**user**: [enrich:false] I’ll provide the note contents, and instructions.
**assistant**: What are the note contents?
**user**: [enrich:true] title: {{@page.name}}
Everything below is the content of the note: 
{{readPage(@page.ref)}}
**assistant**: What are the instructions?
**user**: [enrich:false] Generate a short and concise summary of the note.

These messages will be parsed into multiple chat messages when calling the LLM’s api. Only the response from the LLM will be included in the note where the template is triggered from.

The enrich attribute can also be toggled on or off per message. By default it is either disabled or goes off of the aiPrompt.enrichMessages frontmatter attribute. Assistant and system messages are never enriched.

Post Processors

As of version 0.4.0, aiPrompt.postProcessors can be set to a list of space-script function names like in the example below. Once the LLM finishes streaming its response, the entire response will be sent to each post processor function in order.

Each function must accept a single data parameter. Currently, the parameter follows this typing:

export type PostProcessorData = {
  // The full response text
  response: string;
  // The line before where the response was inserted
  lineBefore: string;
  // The line after where the response was inserted
  lineAfter: string;
  // The line where the cursor was before the response was inserted
  lineCurrent: string;
};

A simple post processing function looks like this:

silverbullet.registerFunction({ name: "aiFooBar" }, async (data) => {

  // Extract variables from PostProcessorData
  const { response, lineBefore, lineCurrent, lineAfter } = data;

  // Put the current response between FOO and BAR and return it
  const newResponse = `FOO ${response} BAR`;
  return newResponse
}

This function could be used in a template prompt like this:

---
tags:
- template
- aiPrompt
- meta

aiprompt:
  description: "Generate a random pet name."
  slashCommand: aiGeneratePetName
  insertAt: cursor
  postProcessors:
  - aiFooBar
---

Generate a random name for a pet. Only generate a single name. Return nothing but that name.

Running this prompt, the LLM may return Henry as the name and then aiFooBar will transform it into FOO Henry BAR which is what will ultimately be placed in the note the templated was executed from.