Bots and integrations

A bot is an account that belongs to a person, its owner. Bots carry a Bot badge everywhere, so you always know when you talk to one. They can answer commands, post messages and help with moderation.

What a bot can see

In an encrypted channel, a bot reads and writes only as a regular member of the channel’s encryption, just like a person’s device. It can read every encrypted channel it can view, and nothing else. When a bot joins or leaves an encrypted channel, the channel shows a notice to everyone.

Adding a bot to a room

Bots join rooms only with consent. Open the bot’s add link (its owner shares it) and choose a room where you may manage the room. The consent screen shows who owns the bot and the permissions it asks for. The bot then joins with a role of exactly the permissions you confirmed, and never more than you have yourself.

The consent screen for adding the bot Raid Planner to the room Night Owls Gaming, listing its owner, the permissions it asks for and a notice that a bot reads the encrypted channels it can view. — Adding a bot: who owns it, the permissions it asks for, and a plain notice about encrypted channels.

Room settings → Applications lists the installed bots. Removing one takes it out of the room and deletes its role. If the owner of a bot is banned, their bots go too.

The Applications tab of the room settings with the installed bot Raid Planner, its permissions and its three slash commands, each with a switch. — Installed applications per room, with their permissions and commands.

No-bots zones

Bot tokens are a single secret, without a second factor. For sensitive places, a room, a category or a single channel can be marked No bots: bots can then neither see nor join it, whatever their roles. New rooms keep their encrypted channels closed to bots unless a channel explicitly allows them.

Commands

Bots add their own slash commands, which appear in the command list when you type /. In encrypted conversations, what you type after the command is encrypted too.

Webhooks

A webhook is a secret address that another service, such as a build server or a monitoring tool, uses to post messages into a channel. Room admins create them under Room settings → Webhooks. Posts from a webhook carry a badge so you can tell them apart.

Webhooks can post into encrypted channels as well, without being able to read them: the post is sealed with a key that only the channel’s members can open.

Writing your own bot

Anyone can create a bot under Settings → Applications. The developer pages describe the bot runtime and the protocol for applications.