CoinBot

Your colleges and you want to get something to eat, but you can't decide on where to go? Why not fire up @CoinBot inside your Telegram chat and let it decide.

CoinBot is an open-source bot for the Telegram Messenger which helps you (or a group) make random decisions. It supports multiple modes, like rolling dice, flipping a coin or choosing a random item from a list.

Motivation

The idea was born from the exact scenario described at the beginning. Since the concept itself was simple, I hopped right into my editor and built a working version of the bot within a few minutes. At this point I thought it would make a cool open-source project, so why not extend it with a few more features.

There isn't much else to the project than generating random values in a few different ways, so I thought to myself: Why not use this chance to focus on code quality, structure and modularity. And so I did – because who knows if I ever will work on such a simple but useful project again.

All commands are modular and use the same definition scheme. This structure makes it possible to add new commands by adding a single file – they will work in inline & chat mode, and even the website updates according to the same files.

I used Telegraf for the bot itself and Next.js for the website. Both were a pleasure to work with.