Instead of defining collectives and having their design meet the interface design with the coffeebot as an intermediary, instead I'll define the interface and enumerate all the exceptional events and handle those from coffeebot's perspective.
Trying to organize the details is proving to be difficult, even with a simple toybot. Accomodating for extension is difficult. Software is hard. Accomodating for feature sets is hard.
This bot unites people within a zulip organization in physical proximity with beloved coffee in an efficient, low maintenance way. Coffeebot organizes collectives, providing an interface for those who want coffee and delegates a coffee maker for the collective randomly.
Users can interact with coffeebot in the following ways.
@Coffeebot init- Initialize a collective@Coffeebot yes- Join a forming collective@Coffeebot no- Withdraw from a forming collective@Coffeebot ping- Ping all those in the collective. Only the maker may do this.
A collective is a group of people who want coffee. Once a collective is formed, Coffeebot will designate a maker. That maker makes the coffee for the collective. Then once the coffee is made, the maker simply types @Coffeebot ping to alert others their coffee is ready. Everyone rejoices.
Coffeebot should be as quiet as possible, using emoji to signify confirmation and state to the user, only posting a message during exceptional events. In the case where Coffeebot can't reply via Emoji, it'll send a message
Coffeebot should be lax in what it accepts from the user, providing for a convenient map from text English to modifications of state. The map should be easily modifiable.
If coffeebot was PM'd, Coffeebot will only update the collective count, not by sending a new message, but by decrementing the count using the :three, two, one: emotes. The only problem is that users might click on these emotes and make keeping track confusing... that's a significant problem I think. Maybe instead only post when the collective is about to be closed.. maybe silent collectives are more trouble then they are worth. Perhaps try to accomodate for it.
All commands could also specify keywords, like collective or timeout. The interface could be: :collective 12 or collective=12
I like keyword style tokens because there's no ambiguity between if whitespace is allowed. A possible problem is:
- "@coffeebot join:collective 15"
but this doesn't have to fail. Colons are not otherwise present. Specifically ignore colons that have whitespace after them, though, as that is normal English (see: this document)
Commands:
- "@coffeebot init\w*"
- "@coffeebot start"
Possibly supported down the line: Custom timeout, custom collective size
Possible responses:
- User is already in an open collective
Refer the user to their collective.
Create a new collective. Append it to the queue.
Commands:
- "@coffeebot yes"
- "@coffeebot join"
- "@coffeebot in"
Possibly supported down the line:
- Emoting with ☕ on the @coffeebot init reply
Possible responses:
- User is already in an open collective
Refer the user to their collective. This requires a map from user to collectives.
I also need a map from collective ids to users. I can store them in the same map. Just.. weird.
If I want to iterate over them, I could do two things: filter the iterator for only collectives
or create a separate map for users -> collectives and collectives -> users.
- No open collectives in topic
Tell the user there are no active collectives in the topic. To join a collective without posting in a specific topic, show the user how to join a collective by name.
Put the user in the most recent open collective in the stream.
Commands:
- "@coffeebot no"
- "@coffeebot leave"
- "@coffeebot out"
Possibly supported down the line:
- Removing the ☕ emote on the @coffeebot init reply
This specific action has a special case, removing the ☕ emote after the collective is closed should have coffeebot do what exactly? Message the user privately and tell them "too bad you're in." Maybe let the user know that they can forfeit their coffee instead, but they can't forfeit being the maker.
Possible responses:
- Last collective in topic has been closed in the last two hours.
If the user isn't the maker: Drop them from the collective, ping the maker to let them know to make n-1 coffees.
If the user is: Reject their request.
-
User is in the open collective. Drop them from the collective. Acknowledge their confirmation.
-
User is not in the open collective. Warn them they're not in the collective.
Commands: same as joining by topic with a :collective # arg.
- The collective is closed.