maxGPT

bring chat-gpt inside max msp to help you write patches. You need a paid OpenAI api account to use this, as it consumes their paid API. By default it is using GPT4, but you can switch it to gpt-3.5-turbo, however be aware that this uses a system prompt to try to tighten up the max code it returns and to give it in a format which this code can parse, 3.5 needs you to send this manually as the first message. You can use the push-prompt message after you switch models to do this. You should wait for a response before continuing. If you experiment with changing the system prompt it is highly advisable to keep the line about returning code inside markdown code blocks.

Note also that this is SLOW. We can't parse anything until the response is complete as we are parsing either max patch json or javascript which we need to execute, so it's not exactly a snappy experience!

Requirements

• You must have the GLRepl package installed
• OpenAI Api Key
• Preferably GPT4 Access

How to use

add [maxGPT] to a patch, type a question in the window and hit option+return. Go and make a cup of tea while you wait ages for chat-gpt to return a message. When it returns a message a new patcher will open and perhaps a message will be printed into the repl window.

How does it work?

GPT4 cannot read or make compressed max patch format files. However it can create json for patches and it does have some grasp of using this.patcher in javascript to make max objects as well, though it's appreciably worse at the latter. Depending on the prompt used you can get it to output either. By default the system prompt gets it to output json as a maxpat.

Commands

All of the following commands can be called from the [maxGPT] inlet. However in normal operation, once you have created a .env file, you don't need to think about these. However if you need to use maxGPT in a more advanced way there are a few useful things you can do

api-key

maxGPT requires an openAI API key. It is recommended that you have access to gpt4.

The easiest way to pass your api-key to maxGPT is to send the api-key my-api-key-value to the inlet. However it's cool to just be able to make a maxGPT object in any patch and go, so the recommended method is creating a .env file in the root of the maxgpt project folder (the folder which has this README and maxgpt.maxpat in), this should be Max 8/Packages/maxGPT. Inside your .env file add the following, replacing my-api-key-value with your API key value.

OPEN_AI_KEY=my-api-key-value

patch-path

You should not normally need to call this! Set the max msp patch path. This is called by the maxpat when the script starts. It will reload the environment because setting this path is also an indication that there might be a .env file added to the max patch folder. This is the recommended way to set your OPEN_AI_KEY, see above

save-cache

save the current message cache to disk as json, you can use this to pick up a particular context again in future. If the object is deleted or the patch closed the context is lost. It is not saved on patch save, so you must call this function if you want to retain it. Either pass it a path to a file, or it will open a savedialog.

Be aware context lengths are limited by OpenAI limits.

load-cache

reload a chat history into maxGPT.

clear-cache

deletes all the data in the hot cache. Next message will be the start of a new conversation

prompt

Change the system prompt. See code for the current default. It's really important that your prompt tells chatGPT to wrap the code it returns in markdown code blocks.

//some gpt4 generated json javascript here

//some gpt4 generated json javascript here

maxGPT can parse json or javascript code blocks but by default the prompt is telling it to return JSON responses, as this is more reliable than the javascript returned. That being said it is very possible to have maxGPT create patches from javascript code since handling for that is built into the parser. See javascript/maxjs/maxGPTScriptParser.js

temp

Set the temperature of the response. Higher numbers are more creative but probably less correct. Defaults to 0.2 Must be between 0.0 and 2.0

log-model

write the currently active model to the max console window

model

Can be gpt-4 or gpt-3.5-turbo. Defaults to gpt-4. GPT-3 does not use sytem prompts so you will need to manually prompt it before you start talking by using push-prompt.

push-prompt

pushes the current prompt to the model as a question. This is needed for gpt-3.5-turbo as you cannot use a system prompt with this model. You should wait for it to return to continue using maxGPT.

ask

This is what is called by the repl when you hit option+enter

TODO

• setup build stuff for package so maxgpt.js is found (root js folder in build)
• need a shortcut to read a file into maxGPT so it can iterate it. ie how do i change this to make the groove~ object loop cannot current read in a json or maxpatch into the repl, why?
• clearer message when api key is not set rather than script just crashing
• dynamic resize of overlay text