A Hack Club Slack bot for the Stardance mission. It connects to Slack over Socket Mode (a WebSocket, no public URL) using Slack Bolt for Node.js, and answers slash commands: /sripin-ping reports the bot's latency, /sripin-help lists commands, and /sripin-catfact / /sripin-joke fetch from public APIs with error handling. Includes an HTTP health endpoint and a systemd service for 24/7 hosting on Nest.
built the bot on node + slack bolt in socket mode, so it talks to slack over a websocket with no public url. made the slack app from a manifest (auto-adds the slash commands, scopes, socket mode and the @mention event), generated the app-level and bot tokens, dropped them in a gitignored .env, and verified both against the slack api — “bot is running! now connected to slack”.then made it better: 11 commands now, all prefixed /sripin- so they don’t collide with other bots — ping, help, catfact, joke, quote, weather (wttr.in, no api key), define, 8ball, roll (NdM dice), flip, choose. every api call has a timeout and try/catch so a dead api can’t crash the bot, and a couple have offline fallbacks. fun commands post in-channel so everyone sees them. also fixed a real bug where the little http health endpoint would kill the whole bot if its port was taken, now it just disables itself — and added an error handler, clean sigint/sigterm shutdown, and a line that logs every incoming command. last step is deploying to hack club nest so it stays live 24/7 with my laptop closed.
day 1 on my stardance slack bot. started by reading through the whole guide so i knew what i was building - a slack bot that answers slash commands. first thing i actually set up was builting the bot itself - a node project using slack bolt in socket mode, so it talks to slack over a websocket and doesn’t need a public url. wrote four slash commands: /sripin-ping replies with the bot’s latency, /sripin-help lists the commands, and /sripin-catfact and /sripin-joke pull from public apis with axios and have try/catch so a dead api doesn’t crash the bot. also added a tiny http health endpoint on port 3000 so there’s still something to open in a browser, plus a systemd service file for deploying on nest later. set up the git repo, wrote the readme, and pushed everything to github. next up: make the actual slack app, get the xoxb + xapp tokens into .env, run npm install, and test it live in #bot-spam.
