What is Supybot?

Supybot is an IRC bot written in Python; its goals are primarily clarity, utility, and flexibility.

Clarity refers both to the code with which the bot is implemented and the ease with which the users can discover how to use the bot. One of the primary reasons Supybot was written was to give Python programmers a better option for writing IRC bots — the framework since developed makes writing new plugins simple and easy.

Utility refers to the bot's ability to serve a useful purpose. We include several useful plugins by default, and many more are available on this website, so chances are, Supybot does what you want. If it doesn't yet, chances are it will, if you're interested in writing the plugin (or asking/paying someone else to :)).

Flexibility refers both to the ability of the user to customize the way the bot behaves and the ability of the programmer to achieve his or her goals when writing plugins for Supybot. We've written a complete, highly flexible capability system, allowing those who run bots to specify with the granularity of a single command exactly how their users should be able to interact with the bot. For programmers, we offer entry points at every level of the framework for the utmost in flexibility with respect to the IRC protocol. At the highest level, they can simply reply to messages, but at the lowest level they can access the actual socket connected to the IRC server.

We hope that you'll find that Supybot is an excellent and easy replacement for a number of other bots, including Blootbot, Mozbot, RBot, Moobot, and Infobot.

What do you need to run Supybot?

Very simply, the only thing absolutely required to run Supybot is Python . If you run a *nix of some sort, you probably already have Python. On Windows, it installs like any other program.

In addition to Python, to have the best Supybot experience possible, we suggest that you also install Twisted and PySQLite (which may require that you install SQLite).