# "No tasks available" for any text source I give for ner.teach recipe

**URL:** <https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Tags:** usage, ner, spacy\
**Created:** [November 16, 2017, 9:38am UTC](https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92 "2017-11-16T09:38:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mukundvis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@mukundvis](https://support.prodi.gy/u/mukundvis)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 9:38am UTC](https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92/1 "2017-11-16T09:38:01Z")

</div>

Trying an extremely simple ner.teach recipe. But the UI shows “No tasks available” irrespective of what text source I give. Am I doing something wrong?

Command:  
prodigy ner.teach ner\_goal\_type en\_core\_web\_sm train\_data.txt --loader txt --label GOAL\_TYPE

I tried with csv and txt. Both of it are showing “No tasks available”.

Contents of train\_data.txt:  
This is a sentence  
This is another sentence

---

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**Author:** ![irfan-zoefit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9f8e36/32.png) [@irfan-zoefit](https://support.prodi.gy/u/irfan-zoefit)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 10:55am UTC](https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92/2 "2017-11-16T10:55:29Z")

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Data is not in a proper format.

It should look like this.

```
{"text": "Angela Merkel zeigt sich optimistisch", "spans": [{"start": 0, "end": 11, "label": "PERSON"}]}

```

You have to use the file as name.jsonl  
[Related](https://support.prodi.gy/t/annotating-entities-in-text-documents/73/3)

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**Author:** ![ines](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/support.prodi.gy/ines/32/3_2.png) [@ines](https://support.prodi.gy/u/ines)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 1:18pm UTC](https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92/3 "2017-11-16T13:18:05Z")

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I think I know what the problem is: In your example, you're trying to annotate a label `GOAL_TYPE`, which is not actually present in your model – at least not if you're using the default `en_core_web_sm` model. `ner.teach` expects the model you're loading in to recognise the entity you want to annotate already and have at least a vague concept of it – otherwise, it can't suggest you potential candidates. So in your case, Prodigy is looking for entities that are recognised as `GOAL_TYPE` – which doesn't exist, so it doesn't have any tasks available for you to annotate.

As a test, try annotating a label that's built-in – for example `PERSON` or `ORG`, or simply leave out the `--label` argument (which tells Prodigy to show all entities it finds).

We don't yet have a perfect recipe for adding and training a new entity type. Especially the "cold start" is pretty difficult, because you first need to teach your model _something_ about the new entity, before you can use it and correct its predictions.

As a solution for now, try pre-training your model with spaCy, add the new entity and train on a few examples that contain your `GOAL_TYPE` label – see [this usage guide](https://spacy.io/usage/training#example-new-entity-type) for a code example. After training, save your model using `nlp.to_disk()` and then load it into Prodigy – for example:

```python
prodigy ner.teach ner_goal_type /path/to/model train_data.txt --loader txt --label GOAL_TYPE

```

> [@irfan-zoefit](#):
>
> You have to use the file as name.jsonl

`.csv`, `.txt` and `.json` are fine, too! Prodigy comes with readers for all file types, they just need to be formatted consistently. You can find examples of all supported file types and the expected input in the `PRODIGY_README.html`

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**Author:** ![irfan-zoefit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9f8e36/32.png) [@irfan-zoefit](https://support.prodi.gy/u/irfan-zoefit)\
**Post date:** [November 16, 2017, 1:43pm UTC](https://support.prodi.gy/t/no-tasks-available-for-any-text-source-i-give-for-ner-teach-recipe/92/4 "2017-11-16T13:43:57Z")

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Thanks @ines just read the documentation for file formats.