Build a Chatbot with Python

Build a Multi-Turn Chatbot in 5 Minutes

This tutorial walks through building a terminal-based AI chatbot using Barq's API.

1. Install Dependencies

pip install openai

2. Set Your API Key

export BARQ_API_KEY="barq-sk-your-key-here"

3. Complete Chatbot Code

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://api.barqapi.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ.get("BARQ_API_KEY")
)

messages = [
    {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful AI assistant."}
]

print("🤖 Barq Chatbot (type 'quit' to exit)\n")

while True:
    user_input = input("You: ")
    if user_input.lower() == 'quit':
        break
    
    messages.append({"role": "user", "content": user_input})
    
    stream = client.chat.completions.create(
        model="gpt-4o-mini",
        messages=messages,
        stream=True
    )
    
    print("Bot: ", end="", flush=True)
    full_response = ""
    for chunk in stream:
        content = chunk.choices[0].delta.content
        if content:
            print(content, end="", flush=True)
            full_response += content
    
    print("\n")
    messages.append({"role": "assistant", "content": full_response})

4. Run It

python chatbot.py

What's Next?

• Swap gpt-4o-mini for gpt-5.5 for stronger reasoning
• Add temperature=0.7 for more creative responses
• Use deepseek-v4-pro for coding tasks
• Deploy as a web app with Flask or FastAPI