wtf is volet-chatbot?

Volet Chatbot is a PHP package that adds a chat feature to Volet, a widget system for websites. It connects that widget to an AI powered chat interface, so visitors on your site can talk to an assistant. It works with any OpenAI compatible service, meaning you can point it at OpenAI directly or at your own backend that speaks the same API format. The package is built on top of Laravel's official ai package, called laravel/ai. Volet Chatbot itself only wires that package's abilities into the Volet widget on your page. Everything else, like which provider you use, streaming replies, saving conversation history, and any extra tools the assistant can call, comes from laravel/ai. To install it, you add it to a Laravel project with Composer, then publish the config and database migrations from laravel/ai, since conversation history is stored in tables that package creates, along with this package's own assets and settings. After that you set an API key in your environment file, and optionally point the OpenAI URL setting at your own server instead of OpenAI's. You configure which model to use, the system prompt given to the assistant before each conversation, and a rate limit, since every message a visitor sends triggers a paid API call. A built in limiter helps control that cost, keyed by user id or IP address. The chat can be reached by any visitor to the page hosting the widget. Guests are tracked with a conversation id stored in the browser, without needing an account, while logged in users get their identity attached automatically. If you want extra abilities, like letting the assistant look up an order status, you extend the underlying agent class in your own app rather than editing this package directly. Some things are left out on purpose for this first version: built in tool calling beyond what you add yourself, image or vision input, moderation of the assistant's replies, and handing a conversation off to a human. The project says you can open an issue or build these yourself if you need them.