Primer on Tournie Challonge bot

Intro & goals

The goal is to be able to manage the common tasks for Challonge tournaments via Slack, such as reporting scores for matches, etc.

As a next step, I would like to add support for deadlines for each round / match, to facilitate quicker tournaments.

Related projects

When looking for already existing bots, I found these code repos, both seemingly abandoned and not having the features we want:

• Challonger, written in Node.js
• slackbrack, written in Python

Tools & framework

• Claudia Bot Builder as bot framework, deploying as AWS Lambda.
• Jest as testing framework.
• AWS SimpleDB for storage of state. Might switch to DynamoDB later as that SimpleDB isn't developed any more.

Iteration 1 – MVP

User actions

• Link Challonge user ↔ Slack user
• Show open match(es) (all tournaments), including opponent (Slack user + tournament display name), time of “opening”
• Report score on open match

Admin actions

These might be needed, as there’s no way to query a Challonge user the tournament s/he participates in:

• Link created tournament to Slack (channel?)

• Unlink tournament from Slack (channel?), or done automatically when tournament has ended?

• Or, as an alternative approach, just search all open tournaments for a Challonge organization.

Bot state

• Mapping Challonge user ↔ Slack user
• Mapping tournament(s?) ↔ Slack (channel), if not using alternative approach

Iteration 2 – Deadlines per round

User actions

• Query deadline for open match(es)

Admin actions

• Set deadlines for rounds

Bot state

• Deadline per tournament and round

Nice to have

User tournament actions

These actions are available in Slack channel with already linked tournament(?s).

• Sign up for tournament (before it is started)
• Leave tournament (before it is started)
• Mark inactive in tournament (when it is in progress)
• List currently open matches (in all tournaments linked to channel)
• Report score on currently open match (when tournament is in progress)
• Set display name for tournament
• Show participants for tournament (Slack user + tournament display name, standings if available)

Also: it would be nice if the above was available in conversation with Slack bot, for all linked tournaments regardless of Slack channel.

Admin actions

• Link created tournament to Slack channel
• Unlink tournament from Slack channel
• Start tournament
• Finalize tournament

Bot actions

• Announce as deadlines approach, ping users of unplayed matches. Can this be done with a AWS lambda?

Bot state

• Mapping tournament(s?) ↔ Slack channel
• Mapping Challonge user ↔ tournament participant (not strictly needed but can give better performance)