Blog Post Archive

🔍 Why Rasa Gets Complicated

1. Natural language is messy.

Users switch topics mid-way
Use sarcasm, slang, or vague terms
Skip needed info

That means you need stories, rules, and fallbacks to cover all those variations.

2. Conflicts between stories and rules.

If Rasa sees a conflict between a story and a rule, like:

Story: respond with a custom action
Rule: respond with a template

It complains — even if both make sense in different contexts.

3. Substories / modular logic not truly supported.

There’s no native “substory” mechanism like in some dialogue frameworks. You have to manually repeat similar sequences across multiple stories, unless you use Forms or Actions very smartly.

4. Managing slot logic + actions is verbose.

If you want to change bot behavior based on a slot like complaint_type, you need:

A rule or story that sets it
Actions that read it
Conditional logic (e.g., rules with slot_was_set)

That’s a lot of config for just a simple if/else.

🛠️ How to Simplify Things

✅ 1. Use Forms where possible

If your bot needs structured data (e.g., complaint type), use a Form to guide the conversation and auto-handle missing slots.

✅ 2. Use custom actions as brains

Instead of complex story trees, centralize logic in a custom action:

if complaint_type == "major":
        dispatcher.utter_message("Let me escalate this.")
    else:
        dispatcher.utter_message("Thanks for letting us know.")

This makes your stories shorter and logic cleaner.

✅ 3. Limit overlapping stories and rules

If you already have a story doing X, don’t also write a rule doing X unless:

The rule is always true
Or you separate them clearly (e.g., rule is for FAQs, story is for flows)

✅ 4. Fallbacks are your friend

Use fallback policies wisely — they cover unexpected user inputs without breaking the flow.