Running a bot (robot) is a great way to add functionality to Hipchat rooms. A bot is a user in the Hipchat Group controlled by a computer program instead of a human, and often responds to specially formatted commands. They can answer questions, provide automated notifications, deploy the latest version of a website, or provide a source of fun.

A number of bot frameworks have been created by our users and every framework provides a way to add plugins so that customized commands be implemented.

• Hubot & Hipchat adapter (node.js) — setup instructions
• Err (Python)
• isis (Ruby)
• Lita & lita-hipchat adapter (Ruby)
• robut (Ruby)
• Will (Python)
• wobot (node.js)
• Less mature/active projects include: happy_fun_time_bot (Ruby), hippybot (Python), hipbot (C#), XmppBot-for-Hipchat (C#), and HipBot (Ruby and Eventmachine).

Technical Note

• Bots use the XMPP over BOSH protocol to connect and access chat rooms, providing a great way to do real-time handling of chat instead of relying on the Hipchat API.
• Raw XMPP is not supported by Atlassian, only XMPP over BOSH is.