Before you start making bots, consider reading these essays and articles. Also worth browsing: resources for cleaning up your bot’s language.
Coding is for art, fashion, space travel, activism, anything! Projects can be as diverse as the people writing them. https://t.co/hfJ1eHcVEP
— Emily Claire Reese (@eclairereese) August 18, 2017
Intro to programming¶
- What is code? (by Paul Ford)
- ‘Real’ Programming Is an Elitist Myth (by Paul Ford)
- Programming from A to Z (by Daniel Shiffman)
- Getting started with creative coding: 10-minute tutorials (by Harry Alisavakis, Mario Carrillo, Kate Compton, ilithya, Ruth John, and Sam Wray)
- Exploring generative spaces (by Sabine Wieluch)
- The Node Beginner Book (by Glitch)
- Glitchet: Art Resources (by Glitchet)
- PROCJAM Tutorials ()
- So you want to build a generator… (by Kate Compton)
- What is Generative Art? (by Amy Goodchild)
- Practical Procedural Generation for Everyone (by Kate Compton)
- Color Theory and Procedural Generation (by Cassandra Lugo)
- Generating things with code (by Nicolas Barradeau)
- r/proceduralgeneration (by Reddit)
- Machine Learning for Artists (by @ml4a_)
Working with images¶
- Algorithmic Art (by Tyler Hobbs)
- Little Planet Procedural (by Alan Luo)
- Generative Machine Learning on the Cloud (by Emily Glanz)
- Building An AI Artist Using Neural Networks (by Anand Krish)
- Five Strategies For Collaborating With A Machine (by Emily Short)
- Generative Artistry (by Tim Holman)
- Why Love Generative Art? (by Jason Bailey)
- Loops & Early Cinema: a Brief History (by Golan Levin)
See also: opensource image bots.

— snufkin (@sn_fk_n) May 17, 2021
Working with text¶
General¶
- Finding Rhymes with Python (by Nate Smith)
- Electronic Literature (by Dr. Mark Sample, Kristen Eshleman, Robert McSwain, and Sara Swanson)
- Best Practices for Procedural Narrative Generation (by Rogelio Cardona-Rivera and Chris Martens )
- N-Grams and Markov Chains (by Daniel Shiffman)
- Markov Models Write Fairy Tales (by Aja Hammerly)
- Rivescript (by Noah Petherbridge)
- Machines Are Poets Too (by Brent Bailey)
Python¶
- Working with Tracery in Python (by Allison Parrish)
- NLP concepts with spaCy (by Allison Parrish)
- Working with CSV files (by Allison Parrish)
- Understanding word vectors (by Allison Parrish)
- Quick word counts with Counter objects (by Allison Parrish)
See also: opensource text-based bots.
I am a Software Engineer using serious Software Engineering Analogies pic.twitter.com/a7iZmjWRah
— Terian ??? (@spine_cone) April 3, 2017
Emoji 🤖¶
- That Emoji Does Not Mean What You Think It Means (by Alissa Walker)
- The whimsical world of emoji swearing (by Stan Carey)
- What is Gender and Why Does it Matter to Emoji? (by @pauldhunt)
- The Westernization of Emoji (by Adrienne LaFrance)
- Emoji for fun and profit (Webstock ’17) (by Cal Henderson)
- emojis.json (by Oliver Raduner)
In honor of #WorldEmojiDay, revisit where it all started—NTT DOCOMO’s original set of 176 emoji https://t.co/ocjHTwd0Ou #MoMACollection pic.twitter.com/4yr1lNPSMd
— Museum of Modern Art (@MuseumModernArt) July 17, 2017
Technical stuff¶
- Learn command line (by Tracy Osborn)
- Troubleshooting cron jobs for bot makers (by Liz Rush)
- Wizard Zines (by Julia Evans)
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Be sure to reach out on Twitter, or ask in the Botmakers community!
“The truth is that generative artists skillfully control both the magnitude and the locations of randomness introduced into the artwork.”
– @artnome #GenerativeArt #Generative #ComputerArt pic.twitter.com/CHl8USMKLl— Fabio Catapano (@fabiocatapano) July 23, 2019
The problem with computers is that they do what you tell them to.
— Carolyn VanEseltine (@mossdogmusic) July 6, 2019
Latest from the blog
Eight years of Botwiki, and 2,000 bots
Happy birthday, Botwiki!
Cheap Bots, Done Quick suspended, this time for good
So long, and thanks for all the bots.
Twitter shutting down free access to their API on February 9
I keep saying it's an end of an era quite often these days.
How do folks get into creative botmaking?
Sharing the stories of our early botmaking days.