Our Inspiration
Facebook Messenger chats are a convenient and popular way to keep in touch with your friends, family, and peers. However, unlike other messaging apps, Facebook chats aren't very customizable. Users can't add custom commands or create chat bots to execute special instructions (unlike, for example, Slack). All that changes now.
Our Goal
We aim to change the way the average person communicate over Facebook. Instead of the boring, regular Facebook chats of old, people will now be able to create chat bots to enhance their chat experience. These bots will allow users to execute a wide range of customizable commands, from checking stock prices to turning on their lights.
What It Does
Our platform lets users easily create a new Facebook chat bot and add any desired commands they wish their bot to support. First, the user will create a new Facebook account that will be used by the bot. This is the account the user will later add to their Messenger chats. Then, the user will add the desired chat modules to that bot. They can even create custom commands using HTTP GET requests. Then, you're done!
How We Built It
Our hack is an Express.js app. We used facebook-chat-api to monitor the users' Facebook messages and interpret them as commands for our bots. We incorporated some built-in recipes using API's from Google News, Yahoo Weather, and IBM's Alchemy (for sentiment analysis).
Challenges We Ran Into
OAuths for Facebook and Twitter were tough to get working, but once we did, it greatly enhanced the app's functionality and versatility.
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