Mycroft

Mycroft is a hackable open source voice assistant.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Getting Started
• Running Mycroft
• Using Mycroft
  • Home Device and Account Manager
  • Skills
• Behind the scenes
  • Pairing Information
  • Configuration
  • Using Mycroft Without Home
  • API Key Services
  • Using Mycroft behind a proxy
    • Using Mycroft behind a proxy without authentication
    • Using Mycroft behind an authenticated proxy
• Getting Involved
• Links

Getting Started

First, get the code on your system! The simplest method is via git (git installation instructions):

• cd ~/
• git clone https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core.git
• cd mycroft-core
• bash dev_setup.sh

This script sets up dependencies and a virtualenv. If running in an environment besides Ubuntu/Debian, Arch or Fedora you may need to manually install packages as instructed by dev_setup.sh.

NOTE: The default branch for this repository is 'dev', which should be considered a work-in-progress. If you want to clone a more stable version, switch over to the 'master' branch.

Running Mycroft

Mycroft provides start-mycroft.sh to perform common tasks. This script uses a virtualenv created by dev_setup.sh. Assuming you installed mycroft-core in your home directory run:

• cd ~/mycroft-core
• ./start-mycroft.sh debug

The "debug" command will start the background services (microphone listener, skill, messagebus, and audio subsystems) as well as bringing up a text-based Command Line Interface (CLI) you can use to interact with Mycroft and see the contents of the various logs. Alternatively you can run ./start-mycroft.sh all to begin the services without the command line interface. Later you can bring up the CLI using ./start-mycroft.sh cli.

The background services can be stopped as a group with:

• ./stop-mycroft.sh

Using Mycroft

Home Device and Account Manager

Mycroft AI, Inc. maintains a device and account management system known as Mycroft Home. Developers may sign up at: https://home.mycroft.ai

By default, mycroft-core is configured to use Home. By saying "Hey Mycroft, pair my device" (or any other request verbal request) you will be informed that your device needs to be paired. Mycroft will speak a 6-digit code which you can enter into the pairing page within the Mycroft Home site.

Once paired, your unit will use Mycroft API keys for services such as Speech-to-Text (STT), weather and various other skills.

Skills

Mycroft is nothing without skills. There are a handful of default skills that are downloaded automatically to your /opt/mycroft/skills directory, but most need to be installed explicitly. See the Skill Repo to discover skills made by others. And please share your own interesting work!

Behind the scenes

Pairing Information

Pairing information generated by registering with Home is stored in: ~/.mycroft/identity/identity2.json <-- DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH OTHERS!

Configuration

Mycroft configuration consists of 4 possible locations:

• mycroft-core/mycroft/configuration/mycroft.conf(Defaults)
• Mycroft Home (Remote)
• /etc/mycroft/mycroft.conf(Machine)
• $HOME/.mycroft/mycroft.conf(User)

When the configuration loader starts, it looks in these locations in this order, and loads ALL configurations. Keys that exist in multiple configuration files will be overridden by the last file to contain the value. This process results in a minimal amount being written for a specific device and user, without modifying default distribution files.

Using Mycroft Without Home

If you do not wish to use the Mycroft Home service, before starting Mycroft for the first time, create $HOME/.mycroft/mycroft.conf with the following contents:

{
  "skills": {
    "blacklisted_skills": [
      "mycroft-configuration.mycroftai",
      "mycroft-pairing.mycroftai"
    ]
  }
}

Mycroft will then be unable to perform speech-to-text conversion, so you'll need to set that up as well, using one of the STT engines Mycroft supports.

You may insert your own API keys into the configuration files listed above in Configuration. For example, to insert the API key for the Weather skill, create a new JSON key in the configuration file like so:

{
  // other configuration settings...
  //
  "WeatherSkill": {
    "api_key": "<insert your API key here>"
  }
}

API Key Services

These are the keys currently used in Mycroft Core:

• STT API, Google STT, Google Cloud Speech
• Weather Skill API, OpenWeatherMap
• Wolfram-Alpha Skill

Using Mycroft behind a proxy

Many schools, universities and workplaces run a proxy on their network. If you need to type in a username and password to access the external internet, then you are likely behind a proxy.

If you plan to use Mycroft behind a proxy, then you will need to do an additional configuration step.

NOTE: In order to complete this step, you will need to know the hostname and port for the proxy server. Your network administrator will be able to provide these details. Your network administrator may want information on what type of traffic Mycroft will be using. We use https traffic on port 443, primarily for accessing ReST-based APIs.

Using Mycroft behind a proxy without authentication

If you are using Mycroft behind a proxy without authentication, add the following environment variables, changing the proxy_hostname.com and proxy_port for the values for your network. These commands are executed from the Linux command line interface (CLI).

$ export http_proxy=http://proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export https_port=http://proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com,0.0.0.0,::1"

Using Mycroft behind an authenticated proxy

If you are behind a proxy which requires authentication, add the following environment variables, changing the proxy_hostname.com and proxy_port for the values for your network. These commands are executed from the Linux command line interface (CLI).

$ export http_proxy=http://user:password@proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export https_port=http://user:password@proxy_hostname.com:proxy_port
$ export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1,localaddress,.localdomain.com,0.0.0.0,::1"

Getting Involved

This is an open source project and we would love your help. We have prepared a contributing guide to help you get started.

If this is your first PR or you're not sure where to get started, say hi in Mycroft Chat and a team member would be happy to mentor you. Join the Mycroft Forum for questions and answers.

Links

• Creating a Skill
• Documentation
• Skill Writer API Docs
• Release Notes
• Mycroft Chat
• Mycroft Forum
• Mycroft Blog