Make a Slack bot to compose Commits.to URLs

[dreeves]

we could totally make a simple slack bot that provides a slash command to create a commitment and generate the commits.to URL. it’s almost superfluous but could trim off a bit of friction i guess. or add discoverability since you see what apps are connected and might check what commands they provide.

this is not high priority but luke wanted to work on it...

[echodaniel]

Since it’s not high priority, mind if I give it a shot? Also, is there a certain language you need it written in? I was going to use Python since that’s what I’m most familiar with.

[echodaniel]

@chrisbutler created a pull request (for the base code) on the fork on my account if you'd like to check it out. Let me know what you think - working on my cell for the next week or so until I get my laptop in.

[chrisbutler]

hey @echodaniel, thanks for taking this on!

i know almost nothing about python (😞) but i'm definitely interested in looking at and understanding this.

does this slackbot code run independently of the main commits.to repo/codebase? i'm wondering if maybe we should have a separate repo for all slackbot work. thoughts?

[echodaniel]

Hey @chrisbutler, you’re welcome! I’ve been waiting for a project that I can take on with regards to commits.to!

In answer to your question, yes, it should run in a virtual environment separate from the rest of the production code, BUT I definitely like the idea of a separate repo for all the slackbot code, especially during development and testing.

[echodaniel]

@chrisbutler I’m thinking of designing it in such a way that (one way we could go is) all we’d need to do is give it / commands to test out different commits. So an example would be (within slack) if someone wanted to test a commit they could simply do

“@ commitbot /parse_this_promise”

And the bot would (maybe, this might take more work than I’m realizing) automatically create that commit, using that persons username as long as they already have an account set up and both names match. Or it might just create it as CommitBot. I’ll have to add features and test them out as I go.