swiftspiracy

A playful Discord bot that sends random praises and (occasionally) a conspiracy theory — and cleans up after itself.

Setup

Create a Discord Bot

Warning

Discord updates frequently -- if any steps seem outdated, refer to the official docs: https://discord.com/developers/docs/intro

1. Log into Discord.
2. Go to Discord Developer Portal
3. Click "New Application", give it a name, and create it.
4. In the sidebar, go to Bot, click "Add Bot".
5. Under OAuth2 > URL Generator:
   1. Select "bot" scope.
   2. Under Bot Permissions, check at least:
      • Send Messages
6. Use the generated URL to invite the bot to your server.
7. In the Bot tab, click "Reset Token", copy the token and save it in your .env (view next step).

Configuration

Create a .env file in the root of your project with the following keys:

• DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN: Your bot token from the Discord developer portal.

• DISCORD_CHANNEL_ID: The ID of the channel where the bot should send messages.

• SEND_MESSAGE_INTERVAL_MIN: Minimum interval between messages (as an integer).

• SEND_MESSAGE_INTERVAL_MAX: Maximum interval between messages (as an integer).

• SEND_MESSAGE_UNIT: Time unit for the interval. Acceptable values: "second", "seconds", "minute", "minutes", "millisecond", "milliseconds".

• DELETE_CONSPIRACY_DELAY: Time to wait before deleting a conspiracy message. Use Go duration format (eg "3s", "500ms", "1m").

• CONSPIRACY_PROBABILITY: Probability (from 0.0 to 1.0) that a conspiracy message is sent after a praise. Eg, 0.4 = 40% chance.

You can view the .env-sample as an example completed template.

Install + Run

Vanilla (Local Dev)

1. Install Go via https://go.dev/doc/install
2. Install Make if you don't have it via https://www.gnu.org/software/make/
3. Run:

   make           # builds the bot
   ./bin/bot      # starts the bot
   

Docker

We maintain a ghcr image at ghcr.io/the-programmers-hangout/swiftspiracy-bot:latest

1. Pull the image:

   docker pull ghcr.io/the-programmers-hangout/swiftspiracy-bot:latest
   

2. Run it with your .env file:

   docker run --env-file ./.env ghcr.io/the-programmers-hangout/swiftspiracy-bot:latest
   

Notes

• The bot gracefully shuts down on CTRL+C.
• Conspiracy messages are deleted after a short delay to keep the mystery alive, you should configure it to be low.
• Messages are sourced from praises.json and conspiracies.json. If your timings for message are too short for the duration the bot runs, the messages will repeat.

If using nix

and if you are NOT using direnv At the project root directory, run: nix develop and you'll have a development shell with the go.mod specified version of Golang (1.23.4 as of writing) And if you're a chad, using direnv, you'll automatically load the environment when you cd into the project.

The flake also comes with pre commit hooks that will be run automatically when running nix flake check, it can also be extended to run arbitrary tests.