How to set up a Mastodon bot on botsin.space

This tutorial shows how to make an app for Mastodon on botsin.space. Making apps/bots on other Mastodon instances or Fediverse networks might be a bit different, but the general process should be the same.

Where do you all host your Mastodon #bots?

#CreativeBots #botmakers #BotAlly

— botwiki.org (@[email protected]) 2023-03-04T16:40:38.648Z

A few things to note specifically about botsin.space:

• There is a manual review process after you sign up for an account.
• Bots that post publicly are throttled from the public timeline for six hours to keep it from getting cluttered.

Hi folks, so based on some feedback here, I've implemented a bit of code here on botsin.space to limit public posts.

Once an account makes a public post, any posts for the next six hours will be set to unlisted. This feels like an ok compromise to allow a certain amount of bot traffic on the public feed, while not polluting the timeline all that much.

The code is live now but not extensively tested so if anything seems sideways please let me know.

— colin mitchell (@[email protected]) 2023-05-16T13:43:26.095Z

If you do end up signing up, please consider supporting the admin.

First, sign up for an account that will be used for your bot.

After you confirm your email, and your account is approved, click the “Edit profile” link under your username and check off “This is a bot account”.

According to this helpful StackOverflow answer, this does a few things:

• the bot gets a “bot” badge
• its posts don’t contribute to trending tags
• and the bot is marked as a “Service” instead of a “Person”

Next, go to the Preferences page (the “cog” icon) and then click Development.

Now click the New Application button. Name your application, keep the settings the way they are, and click the Submit button at the bottom of the page.

Now you can click your application’s name to reveal the access token for your bot. If you only see your API key, use this tool to generate your token.

And you’re done. Check out the resource page for Fediverse bots here on Botwiki for tutorials and starter projects, and be sure to share what you make with our community!