Roy-Orbison / mmpychessbot

A simple service that provides a computer opponent for the Chess plugin on a Mattermost installation.

mmpychessbot

Matthew Dorner's chess plugin for Mattermost makes it easy to play against your friends and colleagues, but has no built-in machine opponent. This simple service built upon Alex Tzonko's bot and Niklas Fiekas' chess library allows you to add any machine opponent that uses the Universal Chess Interface.

Installation

1. Create a system user on any machine that is always on, and has network access to your Mattermost service. This can be the same server that Mattermost is on. E.g.:

   sudo adduser --system --group --shell /bin/bash chessbot

2. On the same machine, download and install a UCI chess engine, like Stockfish, to a location that user can access. E.g.:

   wget https://stockfishchess.org/files/stockfish_15_linux_x64_bmi2.zip
   unzip stockfish_15_linux_x64_bmi2.zip
   sudo install stockfish_15_linux_x64_bmi2/stockfish_15_x64_bmi2 /usr/local/bin/stockfish

   Ensure you choose a version that works on your CPU. You may need an older Stockfish engine for your system.
3. Switch to your new user:

   sudo -u chessbot -i
   cd

4. Install the python dependencies:

   pip install -U chess mmpy-bot

5. Clone this repo:

   git clone https://github.com/Roy-Orbison/mmpychessbot.git
   cd mmpychessbot/

6. Copy the example service conf file and open it for editing:

   cp mmpychessbot.conf{.example,}
   vim mmpychessbot.conf

   Change the URL to your Mattermost server's, and copy the team's slug from a URL in its main interface, e.g. the your-team in https://mattermost.your-domain.example/your-team/channels/town-square.
7. In Mattermost's main interface, open the Integrations panel from the ⋮⋮⋮ menu, and add a bot account. It does not require any elevated privileges. Copy the access token it provides you back into the .conf file and then save it and close your editor.
8. If you chose a different username or home directory location in step 1, first make a copy of the example service file (as with the .conf example), and edit the User= and/or paths to match.
9. exit the service account's shell. Copy the example or move your customised version of the service file to /usr/local/lib/systemd/system/mmpychessbot.service
10. Enable and start the service:

    sudo systemctl enable --now mmpychessbot

Play

Start a game with the bot account's username as you would any other team member. If you can't see the bot account's icon to access its user menu, thus the Challenge User to Chess link, create a DM channel with it.

You can “nudge” it into responding by @-mentioning its username in a game channel.