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Build Your First AI-Powered Chatbot: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

1. Setting Up Your Development Environment

• Install Python 3.9+ and pip (package manager) on your machine.
• Create a virtual environment to isolate dependencies: python -m venv chatbot-env.
• Install core libraries: pip install openai python-dotenv.

2. Getting Your OpenAI API Key

• Sign up at platform.openai.com and navigate to the API keys section.
• Generate a new secret key and copy it immediately (you won’t see it again).
• Store the key in a .env file in your project root: OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-....

3. Writing the Core Chatbot Logic

• Import openai and os; load the API key from .env using load_dotenv().
• Define a chat() function that sends a list of messages to the

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