HiveMind HackChat Bridge

Relay a hack.chat channel to a HiveMind hub.

hack.chat is a minimal, anonymous, channel-based websocket chat. This bridge is a HiveMind satellite whose input and output are a hack.chat channel instead of a microphone. Channel messages become utterances sent to the hub. The hub's spoken reply goes back into the channel, addressed to the user. Any HiveMind hub, and the OVOS skills behind it, becomes a hack.chat bot.

hack.chat channel  ⇄  HiveMind-HackChatBridge  ⇄  HiveMind hub  ⇄  OVOS skills

Prerequisites

• A running HiveMind hub (hivemind-core) reachable over the network, and a HiveMind access key for this bridge (hivemind-core add-client).
• A hack.chat channel name to join, and a nickname for the bot. hack.chat is anonymous, so no account or token is needed.

Install

pip install HiveMind-HackChatBridge

Or from a checkout:

git clone https://github.com/JarbasHiveMind/HiveMind-HackChatBridge
cd HiveMind-HackChatBridge
pip install .

Declared dependencies: hivemind-bus-client, ovos-bus-client, ovos-utils, websocket-client, click.

Quickstart

1. Register the bridge on the hub, where hivemind-core is installed:

hivemind-core add-client --name hackchat-bridge \
  --access-key "your-access-key" --password "your-password"

2. Run the bridge. Pass the configuration on the command line, using the hivemind-hackchat-bridge console script (or python -m hackchat_bridge):

hivemind-hackchat-bridge \
  --channel your_channel \
  --username Jarbas_BOT \
  --access-key "your-access-key" \
  --password "your-password" \
  --host ws://127.0.0.1 \
  --port 5678

3. Send a message. Open the same channel at https://hack.chat/?your_channel and type:

what time is it?

The bridge forwards the message to the hub and posts the reply back as @user , <answer>.

Configuration

hivemind-hackchat-bridge options:

The bridge forwards every channel message except its own, and strips a leading @username mention of the bot before sending it.

Troubleshooting

• Bot joins but never answers. Confirm the hub is reachable and the access key and password are registered (hivemind-core list-clients), and that the hub produces a speak for the answer.
• Wrong channel. The bot and the user must join the same hack.chat channel name. Open https://hack.chat/?<channel>.

Documentation

• Setup walkthrough: install a hub, register the bridge, and run it end to end.
• Operator setup: the anonymous hack.chat model, security notes, and live end-to-end testing.
• Configuration reference: every command-line option and how message handling works.
• Examples: running the bridge, embedding it in code, and a sample conversation.

Related projects

• HiveMind-core: the HiveMind hub this bridge connects to.

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.