Feature Request: save model and predict function

[bendavidsteel]

A really useful feature of BERTopic is the ability to save a model, reload it later, and run predict on new data that is then sorted into the same clusters as before. Is there anything specific about toponymy that would not allow this?

If you don't have the time/need for this feature I don't mind giving implementation a go sometime myself.

[lmcinnes]

This is in principle quite possible. What you need in practice is a predict method for cluster layers, and the Clusterer object able to inject the relevant information into the layer to allow for a predict method. Since the ToponymyClusterer is really a variant of HDBSCAN you could, in theory, borrow predict functionality from that, but you would need to re-implement it within the current framework (specifically within the fast_hdbscan implementation which doesn't currently support it. For the EVoCClusterer one would need some sort of support for a predict method in EVoC. That is a lot harder. On the other hand I am busy working on some major changes to EVoC right now, so if a possibility of implementing some manner of predict comes up I will endeavour to implement it.

This is definitely something that we would like to have, but I'm not sure what our timelines are like on getting it done. If you wanted to take a swing at it we would gladly accept a PR (even just to enable it for some cases).