There was a bot on Discord I used before called Socrates, based on Flipper and I wanted to build something like that. Mine is using data from my fanfiction archive so it won't give proper recommendations until a few users like a few fics. After that it should get better the more it's used.
Forum post
Code repository
Link to a Discord channel to use the bot in this server
Link to connect Discord bot to a server
Telegram group to use the bot
Matrix room to use the bot
What it does
It's a companion bot for that self-hosted archive โ think "your own AO3" that can also import/scrape from other sites. The bot gives you fanfic recommendations right in Discord, Socrates-style:
- Recommendations from your reading history โ
!recs,!fresh,!gems,!roll, with pagination (!next/!prev/!page 3) - Cross-platform taste: AO3, fanfiction.net, and RoyalRoad are unified into one works model, so your history on one site feeds recommendations across all of them. No "500 favs limit" wall.
- Slash commands for search, quotes, downloads:
/search,/ask(ask a question about a fic's content in natural language),/quote,/download(EPUB/MOBI/PDF straight to Discord) - Library commands: bookmark, rate, kudos, block/unblock, updates on followed fics
- Community stuff: fic requests board, roadmap voting, links back to your web profile
The honest limitation
The recommendation engine learns from what people like on the archive โ and right now my site has zero users. So "personalized" recs won't be proper until a few people like a few fics. The more people actually use it, the better it gets. Once there's real taste data to learn from, the recs should beat what you got from Socrates, because it's learning from actual engagement, not just what's popular.
So, what would you want?
If you were going to invite a fanfic bot to your Discord server, what would make you actually use it?
- Recs based on what? (fandoms you're active in, specific pairings, tone/vibe, length?)
- What's the one feature that would make it your default rec source?
- How do you feel about bots that track your reading history and suggest you what to read next vs. ones that give more generic suggestions?
- Anything Socrates used to do that you miss and wish existed elsewhere?
I'm building this solo and want to make something the community actually wants, not just what I think is cool. Fire away.
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