ARCHIE (ARC HPC Intelligent Engine) Chat Widget

Advanced Research Computing (ARC)

Problem

At the University of Michigan, any users of the high performance computing cluster must access it through the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) department. These users often have questions about ARC and about high performance computing in general.  

Audience

Users of U-M’s high performance computing cluster

Outcome/Impact

ARCHIE (ARC HPC Intelligent Engine)  Chat Widget is an AI-powered chat assistant embedded directly into the Open OnDemand (OOD) web portal. It appears as a small floating chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of every OOD page. When a user clicks it, a chat window opens where they can ask questions about high performance computing (HPC). In the back-end it calls out to the Maizey ARC Assistant that references all of the webpages and documentation containing information from ARC.

The assistant is aware of the user’s context: it automatically detects their username, home directory, cluster, Slurm accounts, available partitions, and current OOD page. This means responses include personalized, ready-to-use examples (e.g., sbatch scripts with the user’s actual account and partition names).

Key features

    • Floating chat bubble on every OOD page

    • Context-aware responses using the user’s real Slurm accounts, partitions, home directory, current page, and username

    • Session persistence, conversation survives page navigation within the same browser tab

    • Resizable chat window with drag handle

    • Configurable LLM backend supports UMich Maizey and OpenAI-compatible APIs, but currently configures only with Maizey 

Relevant Topics