Running a bot (robot) is a great way to add functionality to your HipChat rooms. A bot is just a user in your group that’s controlled by a computer program instead of a human and often responds to specially formatted commands. They can answer questions, notify you of important things, deploy the latest version of your website, and be a source of fun.

Garret H.	@jeeves weather in san francisco?
Jeeves B.	The weather in San Francisco, CA is 72° and sunny.
Garret H.	@jeeves AAPL stock
Jeeves B.	AAPL is trading at 395.28: http://www.google.com/finance/chart?q=NASDAQ:AAPL&tlf=12

A number of bot frameworks have been created by our users and they make it very easy to get started. Every framework provides a way to add plugins so you can implement commands specific to your team.

• Hubot & HipChat adapter (node.js) — setup instructions
• Err (Python)
• isis (Ruby)
• wobot (node.js)
• robut (Ruby)
• Less mature/active projects include: happy_fun_time_bot (Ruby), hippybot (Python), hipbot (C#), XmppBot-for-HipChat (C#)

Technical note: Bots use the XMPP protocol to connect and access your chats just like our own HipChat clients. They’re a great way to do real-time handling of chat instead of using our HTTP API.