Whilst browsing HackerNews I spotted a quirky API by Avi Mamenko. This API serves one simple but crucial function, to deliver random clips of Owen Wilson saying ‘wow’ directly into your hands.

So why not stick a Discord bot in front of that API to ensure proper supply of random ‘wows’? OwenWowson is that bot.

Anatomy of a bot

OwenWowson has some fairly simple requirements, he must:

• Convert wow request commands to API calls
• Respond to move commands to move into voice chats
• Play random voice clips via voice chat
• Post informative messages about those voice clips

To power this, we lean heavily into Cogs. These are modular sets of functions that can be used across multiple bots.

In this case, ours cogs are:

• CogErrHandler: Elegantly handle unknown commands
• CogHealth: Debug-ready bot status checks
• CogWow: Core functions unique to OwenWowson

These arm OwenWowson with the following commands:

• !healthcheck: Send a simple healthcheck reply to confirm up status
• !join <voice channel>: Send OwenWowson to a specific voice channel
• !joinme: Bring OwenWowson into the same voice channel as the user
• !wow: Grab a random ‘wow’, add a message to chat, and play the voice line if in a voice channel

Anatomy of a wow

When the !wow command is called, a number of things will happen:

1. OwenWowson requests a random wow via the API
2. A text response is built containing all crucial metadata
3. That voice clip is played in the relevant voice channels

You can find OwenWowson’s source code on GitHub.