Addressing the Robot

Every robot has both:

• a regular name, such as floyd
• a one-character alias, such as ;

Both are valid ways to address a command.

Common patterns

;ping
floyd, ping
floyd: ping
ping, floyd

ping is the canonical first command because it is usually available everywhere the robot is present.

A useful routing nuance

If you send what looks like a command but forget to address the robot, many connectors support the follow-up pattern of sending just the bot name or alias as your next message. That tells the robot to interpret the previous message as if it had been addressed.

Hidden commands

Some connectors support hidden messages, such as Slack slash commands or SSH hidden messages. Hidden messages are not a free bypass:

• the command still has to be explicitly allowed as hidden by the plugin
• the message still has to be treated as addressed to the robot