Making twitter bots using Cheap Bots, Done Quick!
What is it?
Cheap Bots, Done Quick! is a platform for generative Twitter bots.
It uses Tracery to generate content from JSON source.
At it's simplest, it turns this:
{
"origin" : "Hello World"
}into this:
Hello World
Tokens (wrapped with a hash like #this#) are expanded from this:
{
"origin" : "Hello #planets#",
"planets" : ["Mercury", "Venus", "Mars", "Earth"]
}into any of these (it picks a value randomly each time it runs):
Hello Mercury
Hello Venus
Hello Mars
Hello Earth
SVG and dynamic content
Now plain text tweets are great, but the reason that I love Cheap Bots Done Quick is that you can create and tweet images using SVG. Also, you can create dynamic content using Javascript in SVG - for example, writing the date, or loading external content.
Here are a few bots that use SVG to create random images
| @sadkeanubot | @badphotoquality | @time4gametheory | @shakyinsultbot |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| places a pic of Sad Keanu on a random photo of a chair | applies blur or posterise filter to worsen a photo and overlays the date | overlays the "Guys, it's time..." text on a random New Yorker cartoon | generates Shakespeare insults |
| view the source | view the source | view the source | view the source |