The RRSAgent IRC Bot

General Description

RRSAgent is a helpful bot for recording an IRC session.

In the command descriptions below, optional words in commands are indicated in square brackets. RRSAgent's commands are not case sensitive, but, in general, must be grammatically correct. "Please" can be abbreviated to "pls" if you wish to be polite yet still save keystrokes.

Inviting and Dismissing RRSAgent

To use RRSAgent, you must first invite it to your IRC session. When you're finished, you must dismiss RRSAgent from the channel.

/invite RRSAgent <channel>: Brings RRSAgent on to your IRC channel. The log will appear in http://www.w3.org/yyyy/mm/dd-<channel>-irc where 'yyyy' is the current year, 'mm' is the current month, and 'dd' is the current day. Three variants of the log are written; .html contains XHTML, .rdf contains RDF, and .txt contains plain text.
Some irc clients let you omit the channel name and will fill in the name of current channel. This is a feature of the irc client, not of RRSAgent.

rrsagent, [please] excuse us
rrsagent, bye
rrsagent, [please] part
rrsagent, [please] leave: All disconnect the RRSAgent bot from your IRC channel.

Talking to RRSAgent

RRSAgent also recognizes several commands during its logging session. Most commands begin with "rrsagent, ", though a few are recognized without this.

Action Item Tracking

RRSAgent will help track action items recorded while a meeting is in progress. Many of the commands in this set need not be directly addressed to RRSAgent; they will be recognized when addressed to no one in particular and also when received as third person ('/me') messages.

[rrsagent,] ACTION: <text>: Adds an action item described by <text>, assigning it the next sequential number. This command need not be addressed to RRSAgent directly. The keyword 'ACTION' must be in all-caps as shown.

[rrsagent,] ACTION <number> = <newtext>: Replaces the text of action item <number> with <newtext>. This need not be addressed to RRSAgent directly. The keyword 'ACTION' must be in all-caps as shown.

[rrsagent,] ACTION- <number>: Removes action item <number> from the list. This need not be addressed to RRSAgent directly. The keyword 'ACTION' must be in all-caps as shown.

rrsagent, what [are the] action items?
rrsagent, what [are the] actions?
rrsagent, [please] show [the] action items
rrsagent, [please] show [the] actions
rrsagent, [please] list [the] action items: Displays the list of action items. These requests must be addressed specifically to RRSAgent

rrsagent, [please] drop action <number>: Removes action item <number> from the list. This form must be addressed specifically to RRSAgent

rrsagent, [please] ignore action items
rrsagent, [please] ignore actions: Requests that RRSAgent stop tracking action items. This request must be addressed specifically to RRSAgent

rrsagent, [please] track action items
rrsagent, [please] track actions: Requests that RRSAgent begin tracking action items. This request must be addressed specifically to RRSAgent. This is the default state when RRSAgent is invited to a channel

Searching the Log

rrsagent, bookmark
rrsagent, pointer
rrsagent, here
rrsagent, where am I?: Reports a URI to the current location in the log

rrsagent, grep [-i] [first-last|max] <text>
rrsagent, search for [-i] [first-last|max] <text>
rrsagent, find [-i] [first-last|max] <text>
rrsagent, <text>?: Searches the log for <text>. The text is interpreted as a perl regex; e.g. "." matches any character, "<char>+" matches one or more consecutive occurrences of <char>, and "<char>*" matches any number of consecutive occurrences of <char>, etc. -i causes the comparison to be case insensitive. first, last, and max limit the reported results to the specified (first and last) results or to at most (max) results.

Pausing and Resuming Log Recording

rrsagent, silence
rrsagent, stop
rrsagent, off
rrsagent, nolisten: Stops logging channel text to the log

Any line beginning with [off] and any message sent with the '/me' IRC command will also not be logged. This permits channel participants to interject single-line remarks.

rrsagent, on
rrsagent, hello
rrsagent, log
rrsagent, listen
rrsagent, record
rrsagent, start
rrsagent, begin: Resumes logging channel text to the log. This is the default state when RRSAgent is invited to a channel

Help

rrsagent, [please] help: Displays an abbreviated list of commands. Due to "flood control" in IRC, this may be slow.

Acknowledgements

The RRSAgent IRC bot was written by Dave Beckett of ILRT Bristol (Dave calls it 'logger') and Ralph Swick of W3C/MIT. The name comes from earlier variants on the same theme by Ralph.

Ralph R. Swick
$Date: 2002/04/26 19:03:40 $