https://mastodon.social/@internetcoolguy
https://bsky.app/profile/internetcoolguy.bsky.social
this is a bot that generates images and posts them to mastodon and twitter and bsky. it's written in typescript and runs on node.js.
you can run it on your computer and even remix it into something new! you'll need node and git installed. if you install node manually, you should match the node version listed in the .node-version file — but instead of installing node directly i recommend using fnm, which can automatically handle installing and switching node versions by detecting .node-version files.
once you're set, run:
git clone https://github.com/lostfictions/internetcoolguy
cd internetcoolguy
corepack enable # enables use of the pnpm package manager
pnpm install
pnpm devrunning pnpm dev will generate an image and save it to a file on your computer. when posting to the internet, this bot runs using github actions' scheduled events. check out the workflow file for more details.
if you clone the repository you can run your own remixed version that posts to mastodon using github actions too! no need to edit the workflow file — you'll just need to set some environment variables in the github repository settings:
MASTODON_TOKEN: a Mastodon user API token (required)MASTODON_SERVER: the instance to which API calls should be made (usually where the bot user lives.) (default: https://mastodon.social)BSKY_USERNAME: the bot's username on BlueskyBSKY_PASSWORD: the app password for the bot's account on Bluesky
this bot uses dotenv, so if you're testing things locally, you can stick any of the above environment variables in a file named .env in the project root. (it's gitignored, so there's no risk of accidentally committing private API tokens you put in there.)