Bot & chat API

Your stream can be more than a picture: a game your viewers steer with chat commands, a song queue, a counter. With the chat API your tools already read your chat. With a bot token they also write into it – and with Bring their chat here they hear the people on Kick and Twitch too. The full reference with examples is on /developers.

Your chat bot

1. On Go live, open Chat bot under Settings (at the bottom).
2. Give it a name (2 to 32 characters) – “Kofi Beats Bot” to start with – and tap Save.
3. Tap Create a token and copy it right away. It is shown this one time only.

Lines your tools send with the token appear in your chat as your bot: its name, a BOT badge and a quieter colour, never a level or a link to a profile. In the chat overlay for OBS and in the picture your restream copies show, they are smaller. Your bot has no account: nobody can follow it, tip it or sign in as it, and it earns no XP.

Writing works like your own chat: links stay plain text, adult sites are removed, and links to messengers, payment pages or short links are not taken. A line has at most 300 characters. Your bot may send 20 lines in 10 seconds and 60 a minute – enough for a game, not enough to flood the chat.

Writing as your bot

• Over HTTP: send the line with your token to your channel’s chat address. The answer is the line as everyone gets it; a replyTo answers a line – also one that came from Kick or Twitch.
• Over the WebSocket: connect as for reading, send {"type":"auth","token":"…"} first, then {"type":"say","text":"…"}. What can’t be said comes back as an error with its reason.

The examples for both are on /developers.

Keep the token safe

Anyone with the token writes in your chat as your bot. Put it only into tools you trust, never into a page others can open. New token replaces it – the old one stops at once, open connections with it are closed. Revoke stops it without a new one. You and the team can remove any line of your bot, like any other line.

Webhook: told instead of listening

Some tools would rather be told than keep a connection open – a small server in your own network, for example. Under Chat bot → Webhook, enter its address and pick what it should hear about: messages (also your bot’s and those from Kick and Twitch), tips, offers or polls. While you’re live, each such line goes there as a POST, in the same form as the chat API. Copy the secret when it appears – it signs every POST, so your tool knows it really comes from CamuCam.

• The address starts with https://. An address inside your own network (10.x.x.x, also http://) works once the CamuCam team opened your network for webhooks – ask us.
• Your tool answers within 3 seconds. A line that doesn’t arrive is sent again twice, then dropped; lines arrive in their order. The same line may come twice – each carries its id.
• After 20 lines in a row that didn’t arrive, the webhook switches itself off and you get a note in your activity. Fix your receiver and switch it on again.
• A webhook only listens. To write into your chat, your tool uses the bot token.

The details and an example receiver are on /developers.

Kick and Twitch in your chat

When you restream to Kick or Twitch, turn on Bring their chat here at that platform under Restream and enter your channel’s name there (if you signed in to CamuCam with that platform, the name is filled in for you). From your next stream on, what people write there shows in your CamuCam chat with a small Kick or Twitch mark in front of the name.

• It starts when you go live and ends with your stream; a break or a dropped connection keeps it.
• Those lines reach your tools like any other – so a game reads its commands from CamuCam, Kick and Twitch the same way.
• They are only shown here: nobody can tap the name, answer from CamuCam or tip them, and nothing goes back to the platform. You and your moderators can remove a line here.
• When a chat gets very busy, at most 10 lines a second come in; the chat says so when lines are skipped.
• YouTube comes later.

Your CamuCam chat doesn’t go the other way: on the other platforms people see it only where you show it in your picture – see overlays and links.