What is pdd-auto-reply?

This is an automated customer service system for sellers on Pinduoduo, a major Chinese e-commerce platform similar to Amazon. Merchants who run multiple stores on the platform can use this tool to handle incoming buyer messages automatically around the clock, reducing the need for human agents to respond to routine questions. The system works by maintaining a persistent connection to the Pinduoduo seller backend and processing messages as they arrive. When a buyer sends a question, the system checks it against keyword rules first. If the message matches a configured keyword, the system replies with the associated canned response. If no keyword matches, it can fall back to an AI language model to generate a reply, drawing on two knowledge bases the merchant sets up: one for product details and one for general customer service topics like return policies, shipping, and refund procedures. The knowledge base search uses Chinese word segmentation to handle the language correctly. A human handoff feature lets the system route a conversation to a live agent when needed, based on rules the merchant configures. Business hours settings control when automatic replies are active per store. There are also rate limiting and risk filtering features that flag suspicious messages or apply blacklist rules. The backend is split into three separate Python services: one for the HTTP API, one for maintaining WebSocket connections with the Pinduoduo platform, and one for scheduled tasks like log cleanup. The frontend is a management dashboard built with Vue 3 that shows conversation history, allows live chat monitoring, and provides a data overview. MySQL stores business records and Redis handles caching and distributed locking. The project is licensed under AGPL-3.0, which requires any modified version offered as a hosted service to publish its source code. Setup requires Python 3.11, MySQL, Redis, and Node.js.