¶ F0RTHSP4CE Telegram Bot
A Telegram bot made for automatizing internal processes and probably more.
Although, this wiki page is world-readable, it's contents is mostly intended for F0RTHSP4CE residents as it refers to gated internal resources.
¶ Features
¶ Telegram Polls
TL;DR: the bot tracks a list of non-voted residents.
Usage: send a new poll starting with !. To get a list, forward the poll to a bot.
Source: modules/polls.rs.
Some of our internal polls require every resident to participate in them. The bot keeps track of residents who have not yet voted in a particular telegram poll.
To use send a poll to a chat managed by the bot, and prepend question text with !. E.g., !What color we should we paint the wall?. The bot will re-create your poll with its own and also provide a dynamic list of users that did not yet vote in a separate message. This message updates dynamically as users vote.
If you want to annoy all of the not-yet-voted residents at once, forward a poll to the private chat with the bot. The bot will respond with a username list in a copy-pasteable form.
Fun fact: due to Telegram Bot API limitation, the bot can't track polls created by users, only its own. To work around this, the bot deletes the user's polls and replaces them with its own polls with the same parameters.
¶ Wiki Updates
TL;DR: the bot sends a notification about wiki edits.
Usage: edit wiki, then check 📝 [N] Wiki edits [∞].
Source: src/utils/wikijs.rs, src/modules/updates.rs.
Bot checks for updates in this very wiki and sends update notifications into the topic 📝 [N] Wiki edits [∞]. The check is performed once in a minute. The notification message includes short stats of the diff, e.g. (+123, -100) meaning 123 characters added and 100 characters removed.
Interesting note: dealing with the Wiki.js GraphQL API presents its own unique set of challenges.
¶ Borrowed Items Tracking
TL;DR: bot helps to track hackerspace property borrowed by residents.
Usage: just send a message to 🧳 Borrowed items [∞].
Source: src/modules/borrowed_items.rs.
We have an internal topic 🧳 Borrowed items [∞] to keep track of the hackerspace property taken temporarily by residents. When a resident takes an item, they should send a message to this topic and pin this message. The message stays pinned until the item is returned. But people could be lazy and they don't want to bother themselves with pinning and unpinning the messages. The bot does it for them.
The bot checks messages in this topic for messages that mention items taken. When such a message is found, the bot pins the user's message and sends its own message with buttons for each item taken. The user is supposed to press a button to mark the item as returned. After that, the bot unpins a message.
It uses OpenAI GPT-4 to classify messages, so it doesn't require the usage of any particular syntax; should be able to guess item names if they aren't mentioned explicitly; and ignores unrelated messages. The model takes only text as an input. So, it knows if you attached a photo to your message, but doesn't know what is on the photo.
¶ Shopping List Tracking
Usage: send a message to 🚗 Shopping list [∞] starting with hyphen-minus -. Click a button in to mark an item as bought.
Source: src/modules/needs.rs.
¶ Status Tracking
Usage: /status, /userctl --add-mac, /userctl --help
Track residents connected to Wi-Fi. This is opt-in, you need to add your MAC address usign /userctl command to be tracked.
¶ Forward Pins
Usage: subscribe to the "
F0 pins" channel.
Source: src/modules/forward_topic_pins.rs.
We have more than two thousand topics in our internal chat. At this point it's hard to keep track on everything that happen in our topics. To address this, the bot aggregates all of the important messages to the dedicated channel. Whenever a user pins a message or initiates a new topic, the bot automatically forwards this message to the channel " F0 pins". To join this channel, get the invite link here.
¶ Rename Closed Topics
Usage: close or reopen any topic in the "F0RTHSPACE | issues" chat.
Source: src/modules/rename_closed_topics.rs.
In our internal chat, we often close and reopen topics. Telegram clients mark closed topics with a semi-transparent lock icon. Unfortunately, this icon tends to be quite subtle, making it easy to miss when you skim through a topic list. To improve the visibility of closed topics, we started to put a prefix [x] before its name, e.g., a topic 🎮 Ludum Dare had been renamed into 🎮 [x] Ludum Dare after the event completion. This process is now automated by the bot.
¶ Tracking Residents
TL;DR: bot maintains a list of residents.
Usage: /residents or HTTP API.
Source: src/modules/resident_tracker.rs.
Bot maintains a list of active and past F0RTHSP4CE residents by observing their presence in internal chats. Once a new user joins any of the internal chats, bot considers them as a new resident and adds an entry to the database table. Once an user leaves all of the chats, bot marks this entry as removed.
Sometimes this automation might fail due to bugs or since leaving all chats is not a guerantee that the person is no longer a resident. In such cases a manual intervention to the database is performed.
You can check the list of active residents by issuing a command /residents to the bot or through a HTTP API using /residents/v0.
¶ Residents Timeline
TL;DR: resident statistics infographics.
Usage: /residents_timeline.
Source: residents-timeline/index.ts.
¶ Onboarding/Welcome Message
TL;DR: the bot sends a welcome message to new residents.
Source: src/modules/welcome.rs, wiki page.
Bot sends an introductory welcome message with some of the onboarding information once a new residents joins an internal chat. The template of this message resides in the Wiki and all of the residents are encouraged to edit it.
¶ Dashboard
Source: src/modules/dashboard.rs.
¶ Residents Admin Table
TL;DR: access control helper for chats.
Usage: /residents_admin_table.
Source: residents-admin-table.py.
¶ HTTP API
The bot provides HTTP API. Check http://10.0.24.18:42777 for docs.
¶ Monitoring
The bot provides Prometheus endpoint. Check Grafana dashboard for more.