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From what I understood, is a library that you can sends strings with "twenty thousand ninety eight" on it, and it tells you there is the number 20098 there.

More practically: 'last October' gives you a date range.

https://github.com/microsoft/Recognizers-Text/tree/master/.N...

I think these examples explain the functionality very well.

+1 for this. I have some sense reading the page but would love an ELI5.

It seems like its meant for standardizing/parsing freeform input, which I guess could be useful for things like chatbots?

For example you send the user localized text, "Did you receive your package?" then parse the yes/no and continue your decision tree with something like https://www.nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Recognizers.Text.Ch...

It's a part of the underpinnings of LUIS, Microsoft's Azure service for language understanding, and indeed part of building things like chatbots.

An interesting comparison is that Microsoft.Recognizers.Text is a cross-platform cousin to JS library compromise/one: https://compromise.cool/