So in August 2017, Grepbot started life as the simplest of bots, authenticating to a room, and receiving messages.įrom that point until today Grepbot has been an ever-growing project. It turns out that Microsoft had rolled Skype integrations into their Bot Framework which had recently become available. I had made some integrations for both HipChat and Slack at work so I thought I would look into methods for Skype integration. I had used the discovery of the official feeds to enhance my scripts and create some other tools, but with one bot retiring, I saw a need to fill. Unfortunately, Skype was bought by Microsoft and the API (application programming interface) that the original bot used was eventually retired. When I first started playing there was a bot put out by another player that my alliance used. I really make no claims that my bot is the best out there, and it certainly wasn't the first. While I did making a few scripts like that, the real breakthrough came when I learned of the data files published by the developers for third party scripts to consume. At the time, I had been working as a web developer for a number of years so I thought I would be able to develop some small scripts to help with general group coordination. Groups of players form alliances, which work together to protect territories, share resources and work together to win the game (or whatever other goals the alliance has in mind). According to, "Grepolis is a free, browser-based online game with a strong focus on cooperative play and strategy." In gaming genre terms, it is an MMORTS (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy). In 2016 I started playing a browser-based online game called Grepolis regularly.