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|
---
title: /town/our, a tildebrained irc bot
date: 2023-07-23
---
tl;dr: `<our>` is an IRC bot on tilde.town. Commands are just executables in a
world-writeable directory. If you're on town, you can create new commands just
by putting a script in `/town/our`.
Lowering the barrier to entry by so much gave us a pretty nice bot ecosystem,
and has just proven to overall be a bunch of fun.
## genesis
```
2022-04-19:
18:56 <dzwdz> i like the idea of having every command be a separate binary
18:59 <opfez> it does make for rather composable programs (in some cases)
18:59 <opfez> netcat is neat
18:59 <dzwdz> i meant in a [irc] bot
18:59 <dzwdz> you could create new commands very quickly
[...]
19:01 <dzwdz> wait do we have bwrap on here
19:01 <dzwdz> idea: a bot which works like this
19:01 <dzwdz> where the command directory is public
19:01 <dzwdz> so anyone could drop a script there to create a new command
19:01 <opfez> sounds pretty cool
19:01 <opfez> very pubnixy
19:03 <opfez> every command gets run with arguments specifying the user that called the command and (if necessary), additional arguments to the command
```
Basically, at the time I've been thinking about making an `sh(1)` bot framework
which would store each command in a separate script. But, I've realized:
1. if the commands are in separate scripts, they could as well just be arbitrary executables
2. the command directory could be world-writeable
I grabbed a basic Ruby bot framework I've made the other day, and quickly
prototyped [jsbot](https://drewdevault.com/2021/03/29/The-worlds-dumbest-IRC-bot.html)'s
weird cousin.
```
19:49 --> our (beep boop) (dzwdz@localhost) has joined #tildetown
19:49 <dzwdz> our/greet
19:49 <our> hi dzwdz!dzwdz@localhost from #tildetown
19:49 <opfez> \o/
19:49 <dzwdz> /home/dzwdz/code/town/our/cmds
19:49 <dzwdz> world writeable
19:49 <dzwdz> have fun
19:50 <@vilmibm> whee
```
Others soon started playing with it. [~vilmibm](https://tilde.town/~vilmibm)
immediately made some commands in Go, for example.
```
19:56 <elly> our/../../../../../../../bin/ls
19:56 <elly> hm! definitely thought that would work :P
[...]
19:56 <dzwdz> first off
19:56 <dzwdz> how dare you assume i'm such a bad programmer
19:56 <dzwdz> second off
19:56 <dzwdz> our/../../../bin/echo lol
19:56 <our> dzwdz!dzwdz@localhost lol #tildetown
20:13 <@vilmibm> dzwdz: i linked /home/dzwdz/code/town/our/cmds to /town/our
```
## another (kind) bot
After making the proof of concept bot, I just left it running with no other changes.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Except it was broke and I wasn't fixing it. Thus, [~kindrobot](https://tilde.town/~kindrobot)
took over.
```
2022-08-24:
04:01 <kindrobot> our/timefor dzwdz
04:01 <our> Wed, 24 Aug 2022 06:01:15 +0200
04:14 <kindrobot> dzwdz: (when you wake up) for your consideration: I added forking, a persistence data dir, and limited configuration to our. You can check it out in #bots
04:15 <kindrobot> You can use "your/..." followed by "your/town" (or any other command) to test forking
04:15 <kindrobot> You can use "your/count" to test persistence.
```
<br>
...then `our` got her a job at Wikimedia.
```
2022-10-13:
19:59 <kindrobot> When I was interviewed at Wikimedia, I talked about the "our" project that I've contributed a bit to. It seemed like the most relevant to what they were doing which is user defined functions for Wikipedia.
19:59 <dzwdz> i can't believe i got the job at wikipedia
19:59 <kindrobot> Yeah good job dzwdz :)
```
## sample commands
Look, our is just like any other IRC bot, and the commands people have made are
about what you'd expect.
Some are just typical utility commands:
```
<dzwdz> our/timefor dzwdz
<our> Sun, 23 Jul 2023 18:47:44 +0200
<dzwdz> our/w Kraków
<our> Cracow, , Poland | Sunny 28°C (82°F) (feels 29°C (84°F)) | 33% humidity | 1012 hPa
```
Some are fortune-style commands.
```
<dzwdz> our/qotd
<our> 00:50:58 <daisy> "i like to practise my bakery baking bakery in the bakery"
<dzwdz> our/plan9/fortune
<our> Did you know ... that no-one ever reads these things?
```
Some play well-known sports.
```
<our> your/ping
<your> our/pong
<our> your/ping
<your> our/pong
<our> your/ping
<your> our/pong
<our> your/ping
<your> our/pong
```
The one I personally use the most, though, is `our/sh`. It's handy both to
explain \*nix stuff live, and to just do all sorts of ad-hoc stuff.
```
2023-07-23:
[...] [someone was learning about /dev/shm and tmpfs]
<dzwdz> /dev/shm IS tmpfs
<dzwdz> our/sh grep /dev/shm /proc/mounts
<our> tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs ro,nosuid,nodev,inode64 0 0
2023-07-24:
<dzwdz> i'm going to try to write a small article about our
<dzwdz> how bad of a title is "/town/our, a tildebrained irc bot"
<dzwdz> also does anyone have #tildetown logs from around 1650394568
<dzwdz> our/sh date -d @1650394568
<our> Tue Apr 19 18:56:08 UTC 2022
<dzwdz> login, maybe?
[~login did turn out to have the logs. thanks for sending them over <3]
```
## "sandboxes are for little children with tonka trucks"
```
2022-04-20:
14:37 <nihilazo> our/sh rm *
14:37 <dzwdz> nico what the fuck
```
First off---don't get the wrong idea here. This wasn't malicious.
[~nihilazo](https://itwont.work) was just messing around, knowing that I
implemented sandboxing.
(also, note that this happened not even 24 hours after the bot went live)
But yeah, it's safely sandboxed using [bubblewrap](https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap).
The entire filesystem is remounted ro, except a single directory for persistent
data, a fresh `/tmp/`, and a fresh devtmpfs (for `/dev/null`).
The uid is also spoofed to 0, but that's just for shits and giggles.
That being said, the IRC is only accessible internally, so if you can send `our`
commands, you can also just run the commands yourself. Everything's logged, too.
## where's the source
If you must, the source's at [git.tilde.town](https://git.tilde.town/kindrobot/our).
Note that:
* I believe that version is outdated
* the `cmds/` directory in the repo only includes a small subset of **old** commands
* it's still, at its core, a hastily thrown together proof-of-concept
|
