You've probably used plusPlus on slack. And you've probably loved it like I did! It's extremely simple and it helped our team become more interactive and promoted healthy competition. It was extremely easy to use, if someone helped you or you liked something they shared you typed @thatCoolSlacker ++ and they got a point, and if you didn't you typed @thatNotSoCoolSlacker -- and they lost a point. You could also do it for things: @Beer ++ or @Work --.

Over the past few months plusPlus became unresponsive at times. It worked some of the time and didn't most of the time. I reached out to the plusPlus team asking what's going on, I got a response that they are working on it and hopefully it should be fixed some time soon. So I thought, why not actually build a clone and learn about slack bots in the process!

And so I did!
introducing Shuriken the bot that gives you ninja stars!

Now, this is very much an early stage side project of mine and currently supports one bot instance per workspace. And you have to host it yourself. But I learned a lot and wanted to share it with the community.

Go check it out! read the docs and contribute if you want! maybe at some point I will find the time to make this a real product!

Also, I need recommendations on responses the bot should send when it sees a ++ or --.

Here are sample screenshots of Shuriken responses:

When you invite Shuriken into a channel:

When you plus or minus someone:

When you ask Shuriken to show ranking:

Let me know what you think, and feel free to star the repo (if you like it. of course) :)