What and Why • Philosophy • Installation • Usage • Examples • Just Use the Patterns • Custom Patterns • Helper Apps • Meta
Note
August 20, 2024 — We have migrated to Go, and the transition has been pretty smooth! The biggest thing to know is that the previous installation instructions in the various Fabric videos out there will no longer work because they were for the legacy (Python) version. Check the new install instructions below.
Keep in mind that many of these were recorded when Fabric was Python-based, so remember to use the current install instructions below.
Since the start of 2023 and GenAI we've seen a massive number of AI applications for accomplishing tasks. It's powerful, but it's not easy to integrate this functionality into our lives.
Fabric was created to address this by enabling everyone to granularly apply AI to everyday challenges.
AI isn't a thing; it's a magnifier of a thing. And that thing is human creativity.
We believe the purpose of technology is to help humans flourish, so when we talk about AI we start with the human problems we want to solve.
Our approach is to break problems into individual pieces (see below) and then apply AI to them one at a time. See below for some examples.
Prompts are good for this, but the biggest challenge I faced in 2023——which still exists today—is the sheer number of AI prompts out there. We all have prompts that are useful, but it's hard to discover new ones, know if they are good or not, and manage different versions of the ones we like.
One of fabric's primary features is helping people collect and integrate prompts, which we call Patterns, into various parts of their lives.
Fabric has Patterns for all sorts of life and work activities, including:
- Extracting the most interesting parts of YouTube videos and podcasts
- Writing an essay in your own voice with just an idea as an input
- Summarizing opaque academic papers
- Creating perfectly matched AI art prompts for a piece of writing
- Rating the quality of content to see if you want to read/watch the whole thing
- Getting summaries of long, boring content
- Explaining code to you
- Turning bad documentation into usable documentation
- Creating social media posts from any content input
- And a million more…
To install Fabric, make sure Go is installed, and then run the following command.
# Install Fabric directly from the repo
go install github.com/danielmiessler/fabric@latest
# Run the setup to set up your directories and keys
fabric --setupIf everything works you are good to go, but you may need to set some environment variables in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file. Here is an example of what you can add:
# Golang environment variables
export GOROOT=/usr/local/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$GOROOT/bin:$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH:If you have the Legacy (Python) version installed and want to migrate to the Go version, here's how you do it. It's basically two steps: 1) uninstall the Python version, and 2) install the Go version.
# Uninstall Legacy Fabric
pipx uninstall fabric
# Clear any old Fabric aliases
(check your .bashrc, .zshrc, etc.)
# Install the Go version
go install github.com/danielmiessler/fabric@latest
# Run setup for the new version. Important because things have changed
fabric --setupThen set your environmental variables as shown above.
The great thing about Go is that it's super easy to upgrade. Just run the same command you used to install it in the first place and you'll always get the latest version.
go install github.com/danielmiessler/fabric@latestOnce you have it all set up, here's how to use it.
fabric -husage: fabric -h
Usage:
fabric [OPTIONS]
Application Options:
-p, --pattern= Choose a pattern
-C, --context= Choose a context
--session= Choose a session
-S, --setup Run setup
-t, --temperature= Set temperature (default: 0.7)
-T, --topp= Set top P (default: 0.9)
-s, --stream Stream
-P, --presencepenalty= Set presence penalty (default: 0.0)
-F, --frequencypenalty= Set frequency penalty (default: 0.0)
-l, --listpatterns List all patterns
-L, --listmodels List all available models
-x, --listcontexts List all contexts
-X, --listsessions List all sessions
-U, --updatepatterns Update patterns
-c, --copy Copy to clipboard
-m, --model= Choose model
-u, --url= Choose ollama url (default: http://127.0.0.1:11434)
-o, --output= Output to file
-n, --latest= Number of latest patterns to list (default: 0)
Help Options:
-h, --help Show this help message
Fabric Patterns are different than most prompts you'll see.
- First, we use
Markdownto help ensure maximum readability and editability. This not only helps the creator make a good one, but also anyone who wants to deeply understand what it does. Importantly, this also includes the AI you're sending it to!
Here's an example of a Fabric Pattern.
https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric/blob/main/patterns/extract_wisdom/system.md-
Next, we are extremely clear in our instructions, and we use the Markdown structure to emphasize what we want the AI to do, and in what order.
-
And finally, we tend to use the System section of the prompt almost exclusively. In over a year of being heads-down with this stuff, we've just seen more efficacy from doing that. If that changes, or we're shown data that says otherwise, we will adjust.
Now let's look at some things you can do with Fabric.
- Run the
summarizePattern based on input fromstdin. In this case, the body of an article.
pbpaste | fabric --pattern summarize- Run the
analyze_claimsPattern with the--streamoption to get immediate and streaming results.
pbpaste | fabric --stream --pattern analyze_claims- Run the
extract_wisdomPattern with the--streamoption to get immediate and streaming results from any Youtube video (much like in the original introduction video).
yt --transcript https://youtube.com/watch?v=uXs-zPc63kM | fabric --stream --pattern extract_wisdom- Create patterns- you must create a .md file with the pattern and save it to ~/.config/fabric/patterns/[yourpatternname].
If you're not looking to do anything fancy, and you just want a lot of great prompts, you can navigate to the /patterns directory and start exploring!
We hope that if you used nothing else from Fabric, the Patterns by themselves will make the project useful.
You can use any of the Patterns you see there in any AI application that you have, whether that's ChatGPT or some other app or website. Our plan and prediction is that people will soon be sharing many more than those we've published, and they will be way better than ours.
The wisdom of crowds for the win.
You may want to use Fabric to create your own custom Patterns—but not share them with others. No problem!
Just make a directory in ~/.config/custompatterns/ (or wherever) and put your .md files in there.
When you're ready to use them, copy them into:
~/.config/fabric/patterns/
You can then use them like any other Patterns, but they won't be public unless you explicitly submit them as Pull Requests to the Fabric project. So don't worry—they're private to you.
This feature works with all openai and ollama models but does NOT work with claude. You can specify your model with the -m flag
Fabric also makes use of some core helper apps (tools) to make it easier to integrate with your various workflows. Here are some examples:
yt is a helper command that extracts the transcript from a YouTube video. You can use it like this:
yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQVcbY52_gYThis will return the transcript from the video, which you can then pipe into Fabric like this:
yt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQVcbY52_gY | fabric --pattern extract_wisdomTo install yt, install it the same way as you install Fabric, just with a different repo name.
go install github.com/danielmiessler/yt@latestBe sure to add your YOUTUBE_API_KEY to ~/.config/fabric/.env.
Note
Special thanks to the following people for their inspiration and contributions!
- Jonathan Dunn for being the absolute MVP dev on the project, including spearheading the new Go version, as well as the GUI! All this while also being a full-time medical doctor!
- Caleb Sima for pushing me over the edge of whether to make this a public project or not.
- Eugen Eisler and Frederick Ros for their invaluable contributions to the Go version
- Joel Parish for super useful input on the project's Github directory structure..
- Joseph Thacker for the idea of a
-ccontext flag that adds pre-created context in the./config/fabric/directory to all Pattern queries. - Jason Haddix for the idea of a stitch (chained Pattern) to filter content using a local model before sending on to a cloud model, i.e., cleaning customer data using
llama2before sending on togpt-4for analysis. - Andre Guerra for assisting with numerous components to make things simpler and more maintainable.
fabric was created by Daniel Miessler in January of 2024.
