6 ms·

I have a slack workspace that has several bots, some listen for specific keywords and or phrases around the web and post to the relevant channels. Other bots re

by iKlsR 7y ago

I have a slack workspace that has several bots, some listen for specific keywords and or phrases around the web and post to the relevant channels. Other bots remind me if I'm slacking off (maybe stayed a little too long on youtube), remind me of appointments, to drink water, if a stock price falls and some more. Also have filtered rss feeds for business and finance news etc. All of these bots also have custom identities that make it much more engaging like Axelrod is my bot for finance related news. Others tell me if my server is getting swamped, forward important emails like renewing a cert, a deploy failed, bug in prod or something else that requires often immediate attention. Chat widgets from sites in production also go directly to Slack so I can reply quickly if needed. (Gmail, Sentry, Freshchat, Ploi etc, integrate them all and filter out what's critical). Everything generally operates on a 15 min interval or so it's not noisy and I've pretty much tuned it to only receiving specific stuff I want to see. Having a central assistant like hub to go to is very useful and time saving.

muzani 7y ago
Did you build these bots or got them from somewhere?
- iKlsR 7y ago
  Some are are custom built from apis but I daresay you can find just about anything to hit a webhook or integrate into slack or elsewhere nowadays. Some examples are https://littlebirdie.io/ https://littlebirdie.io/ I use to filter hackernews, Zapier for RSS & filtering feeds, google calendar etc, nothing complicated, just know what you need from a specific service then figure out a way to get it to yourself in a recurring distraction free manner be it an existing addon or something you can roll yourself.
  - someguydave 7y ago
    Wait isn’t having a bot send you notifications all day the opposite of “distraction free”?
    - stevejb 7y ago
      Not OP, but I think that the idea is that if a notification makes it through the system, it has been filtered to be worthy of distraction. So, there isn't a cognitive cost to the user of "is the notification worth reading" since it has already been determined to be that way.
      - iKlsR 7y ago
        You're right. On average I probably get about a dozen spaced out during my working hours, 10am to 4pm. On a busy day I might get a couple dozen but the intervals make these easily manageable and I always have priority. If I see something from Gilfoyle in alerts that's probably more pressing than a company I'm following that just released unaudited financials in news. Setup might sound odd but in reality as said above anything that makes it through has some stake in something I'm invested in and want to keep an eye on.
beamatronic 7y ago
What does this cost?
- iKlsR 7y ago
  Costs me nothing. Some channels eventually reach their lifetime usefulness like a topic I was interested in and amassed some 500+ mentions of it on twitter, business news from 8 months ago about someone getting acquired etc. I can export the messages and delete the channel to avoid history archival. Only real cost would be the one or two times a year maintenance and improving bits and pieces every now and then.
  - zitterbewegung 7y ago
    I think the better question is how long did it take you to set this up initially?
    - iKlsR 7y ago
      Right, I started with RSS initially. It wasn't in one go, it was over a period. If I had to give you a definitive answer however, I haven't spent more than a couple hours total on this and I've been using this close to 2 years now. Did a recap last night and I have a total of 17 bots, some post daily, others I see once a month. I'm also seeing tools being shared here that could make this a lot easier as well such as huginn.
      - beamatronic 7y ago
        There’s no subscription charges or hosting costs?
        iKlsR 7y ago
        None whatsoever. Other than my server which is unrelated (because the same service could run locally) where I have a twitter bot that listens for "save this" from my main account and will unroll a thread and format it nicely for reading later. See https://threadsja.com/ThreadsJa/1214555011289690112 https://threadsja.com/ThreadsJa/1214555011289690112 for an example. Used to be personal but I wiped it, got a domain and other people are slowly starting to use it. So about every service I have connected to it is on a free tier except Ploi (free as well) but I need for actual work and is also too good not to pay for.
kryptn 7y ago
Oh cool, I didn't know if others were doing this. I've recently just started going down this path with some zero effort IFTTT triggers but I'm not happy with how infrequent they seem to trigger. My next step is to build my own set of listeners/scrapers.
- bluehatbrit 7y ago
  I posted the same thing on a similar thread yesterday but if you're looking to build some scrapers and listeners and make it easy for yourself I'd highly recommend Huginn (https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn). I set it up a few months back and I've been using it to scrape all sorts of info and alert me on things. IE: * A change in GBP -> NOK exchange rate, to indicate if it's a good time to buy ready for my next trip to Norway. * Alerts on flight prices to help me purchase flights when they're at their cheapest. * Daily digest email with content I'm interested in from HN and some web comics. * A summary of new content coming into my RSS reader. It works really well for this sort of stuff and I found it fairly easy to get up and running.
  - iKlsR 7y ago
    I found this last night and I'm already looking at replacing/extending my existing setup with it. Thanks for the share!
    - bluehatbrit 7y ago
      Nice! It didn't take me too long to setup with docker-compose on a cheap Digital Ocean instance. I'd suggest reading through all the options and toggles provided by environment variables though. There were quite a few I didn't find for a few weeks which proved to be important or useful and they're not explained in the docs all that well. Aside from that, I've not had any teething issues really.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    Thanks for the link! huginn looks cool and useful (good combination!). Impressive work by 179 contributors. I have had numerous simpler projects automating my digital life but I made the (probable) mistake of always starting from scratch and writing stuff all on my own.
alexsexotic 7y ago
How does you not know if your slacking too long on YouTube? Do you use some chrome extension ?
- iKlsR 7y ago
  Rescuetime, https://help.rescuetime.com/article/44-how-to-set-goals-in-rescuetime https://help.rescuetime.com/article/44-how-to-set-goals-in-r...
akulbe 7y ago
would love to talk to you more about how you set this up
- iKlsR 7y ago
  You can see the discussions under my main comment. Pretty much just make a slack workspace and start finding integrations for services you use. Zapier for one makes it super easy to filter out what can get to you from these but I'm seeing good things about https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn now.
bcantoni 7y ago
+1 for having a personal Slack workspace - I think this is an under-appreciated way to host side projects and learn how to develop with Slack. There are so many services which already include Slack integration, you can wire everything up into your personal notification space.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by iKlsR 7y ago

muzani 7y ago

Did you build these bots or got them from somewhere?

iKlsR 7y ago
Some are are custom built from apis but I daresay you can find just about anything to hit a webhook or integrate into slack or elsewhere nowadays. Some examples are https://littlebirdie.io/ https://littlebirdie.io/ I use to filter hackernews, Zapier for RSS & filtering feeds, google calendar etc, nothing complicated, just know what you need from a specific service then figure out a way to get it to yourself in a recurring distraction free manner be it an existing addon or something you can roll yourself.
- someguydave 7y ago
  Wait isn’t having a bot send you notifications all day the opposite of “distraction free”?
  - stevejb 7y ago
    Not OP, but I think that the idea is that if a notification makes it through the system, it has been filtered to be worthy of distraction. So, there isn't a cognitive cost to the user of "is the notification worth reading" since it has already been determined to be that way.
    - iKlsR 7y ago
      You're right. On average I probably get about a dozen spaced out during my working hours, 10am to 4pm. On a busy day I might get a couple dozen but the intervals make these easily manageable and I always have priority. If I see something from Gilfoyle in alerts that's probably more pressing than a company I'm following that just released unaudited financials in news. Setup might sound odd but in reality as said above anything that makes it through has some stake in something I'm invested in and want to keep an eye on.

beamatronic 7y ago

What does this cost?

iKlsR 7y ago
Costs me nothing. Some channels eventually reach their lifetime usefulness like a topic I was interested in and amassed some 500+ mentions of it on twitter, business news from 8 months ago about someone getting acquired etc. I can export the messages and delete the channel to avoid history archival. Only real cost would be the one or two times a year maintenance and improving bits and pieces every now and then.
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  I think the better question is how long did it take you to set this up initially?
  - iKlsR 7y ago
    Right, I started with RSS initially. It wasn't in one go, it was over a period. If I had to give you a definitive answer however, I haven't spent more than a couple hours total on this and I've been using this close to 2 years now. Did a recap last night and I have a total of 17 bots, some post daily, others I see once a month. I'm also seeing tools being shared here that could make this a lot easier as well such as huginn.
    - beamatronic 7y ago
      There’s no subscription charges or hosting costs?
      - iKlsR 7y ago
        None whatsoever. Other than my server which is unrelated (because the same service could run locally) where I have a twitter bot that listens for "save this" from my main account and will unroll a thread and format it nicely for reading later. See https://threadsja.com/ThreadsJa/1214555011289690112 https://threadsja.com/ThreadsJa/1214555011289690112 for an example. Used to be personal but I wiped it, got a domain and other people are slowly starting to use it. So about every service I have connected to it is on a free tier except Ploi (free as well) but I need for actual work and is also too good not to pay for.

kryptn 7y ago

Oh cool, I didn't know if others were doing this. I've recently just started going down this path with some zero effort IFTTT triggers but I'm not happy with how infrequent they seem to trigger. My next step is to build my own set of listeners/scrapers.

bluehatbrit 7y ago
I posted the same thing on a similar thread yesterday but if you're looking to build some scrapers and listeners and make it easy for yourself I'd highly recommend Huginn (https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn). I set it up a few months back and I've been using it to scrape all sorts of info and alert me on things. IE: * A change in GBP -> NOK exchange rate, to indicate if it's a good time to buy ready for my next trip to Norway. * Alerts on flight prices to help me purchase flights when they're at their cheapest. * Daily digest email with content I'm interested in from HN and some web comics. * A summary of new content coming into my RSS reader. It works really well for this sort of stuff and I found it fairly easy to get up and running.
- iKlsR 7y ago
  I found this last night and I'm already looking at replacing/extending my existing setup with it. Thanks for the share!
  - bluehatbrit 7y ago
    Nice! It didn't take me too long to setup with docker-compose on a cheap Digital Ocean instance. I'd suggest reading through all the options and toggles provided by environment variables though. There were quite a few I didn't find for a few weeks which proved to be important or useful and they're not explained in the docs all that well. Aside from that, I've not had any teething issues really.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Thanks for the link! huginn looks cool and useful (good combination!). Impressive work by 179 contributors. I have had numerous simpler projects automating my digital life but I made the (probable) mistake of always starting from scratch and writing stuff all on my own.

alexsexotic 7y ago

How does you not know if your slacking too long on YouTube? Do you use some chrome extension ?

iKlsR 7y ago
Rescuetime, https://help.rescuetime.com/article/44-how-to-set-goals-in-rescuetime https://help.rescuetime.com/article/44-how-to-set-goals-in-r...

akulbe 7y ago

would love to talk to you more about how you set this up

iKlsR 7y ago
You can see the discussions under my main comment. Pretty much just make a slack workspace and start finding integrations for services you use. Zapier for one makes it super easy to filter out what can get to you from these but I'm seeing good things about https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn now.

bcantoni 7y ago

+1 for having a personal Slack workspace - I think this is an under-appreciated way to host side projects and learn how to develop with Slack. There are so many services which already include Slack integration, you can wire everything up into your personal notification space.

deleted 7y ago

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