LacyBot (@lacy_ebooks)

This is a Telegram Bot that can be added to group chats. It allows users to give each other "Titles".

The History

In the earlier days of the Lacy Telegram chat, one of the most common questions was "What kind of luggage do you put your fursuit in?" (and variants of that). Lacy had a preferred type of bag, but no one had a link handy. So, I created a bot that would simply look for questions that appeared to be asking about luggage. I also added in a fun easter egg: the question "Who's a cub?" would cause the bot to return a pre-determined username.

This had two unintended consequences:

1. People would frequently trigger the bot on purpose
2. Everyone wanted their own "titles"

So I hastily built a way to keep track of "luggage" mentions, to shame people who triggered the bot too much, and a way for people to add titles on their own; and thats the Lacy Bot we have today.

The Rules

First, thanks for being interested in helping me maintain this bot. Over time, the bot has become a sort of character unto itself. As we make changes to the bot, I'd like to keep to the spirit of the character.

• The bot doesn't need to have perfect grammar
• Titles cannot be deleted
• The bot should be unpredictible
• Users should never be able to see their "queue"
• The question "Who is a Cub?" will always trigger a hardcoded response.
• The bot should not be triggered too often. It should be surprising and unpredictable, not annoying.

The Code

The Lacy Bot is a Telegram Bot using the Webhooks API. As messages enter the telegram group, they are sent to the bot server, which then looks for key words (using RegEx) to decide how to proceed.

Database

There are two tables: one that keeps track of titles, and another that keeps track of the "luggage" counter.

luggage_counter

Keeps track of the "luggage?" trigger

field	description
id	auto-increment primary key
date	DATETIME field. Records the datetime the record was created
message_id	A unique id assigned to each message by telegram
user_id	A unique id assigned to each user by telegram
username	a VARCHAR field storing the username, WITHOUT the @.
record	Seconds since the the previous violation

lacy_bot

Keeps track of titles

field	description
id	auto-increment primary key
setting	Has one of two Values: who means this row is a finalized title. If its a username, that means this user has that title in the queue.
key	the user the title is assigned to
value	the title

More Information

• Message me on Telegram: @andeswolf (twitter: @omnibahumut)
• Visit the Telegram Bot API
• See the current list of titles at: http://kovawolf.com/lacy/titles