#chimerabot

good question !! they do exist beyond profile pictures.

a variant has the following customization options: avatar, display name, pronouns, and tagline.

here are some examples of the base card and more customized variants :)

front shelves! you should know about these.

with chimera, you can log members in main, secondary, or tertiary front! each shelf can support any number of people listed. it's a nice way to record with more clarity.

you can also save members as always-fronting -- when someone is always fronting, if they're switched out, they move down to the always-fronting shelf instead of just being taken off the front display!

here are some examples:

variants are probably my favorite and most-used feature of the bot :) they're mini-profiles for your members, basically! so you can quickly save and swap between different avatars, pronoun sets, and/or display names. for example... this is Demo Member's base card - their default "profile preview". when they send a message, it'll look like this:

but this is their variant clouds!

and if you happen to activate that variant...

🌕 alternate descriptions,,, maybe. tell me more*.

alternate variants, yes!! chimera currently supports "server variants", which override the active variant based on server ids.

the hierarchy is like this: server variant -> active variant -> base profile.

so chi checks for a server variant, then checks for an active variant, and only if both of those are missing does it use the base profile rendering.

for public and private versions of the same bot... you could use a proxy to create a small profile for some member that can be public-facing, or you can save more private information in custom fields (which don't show up with the profile unless you explicitly change that setting).

our dev process is use-first, so we'll find a problem or imagine some alternate use case, and then think about what specific features that use would rely on, and then think about how to make those features (or if they already exist)

a way to record/encode connections between two members or proxies in a system. they're very simple right now - you link two entities with a bit of descriptive text, and that's that. but then you can query each entity's relationships list and see a masterlist of all of their connections!

it's not implemented yet - i'll make a proper info post when it's more polished. but it's a fun wip :)

also wondering if there’ll ever be a support server at some point! no pressure of course!! (super super not forced)

oh for sure. to give you long-game info: chimera's ideal final state is a mobile app, with a browser dashboard as an alternative and the discord bot as a supplement.

the browser dashboard's initial stage will just be a viewing port, but i'm hoping to build so that editing and viewing can happen all in one. honestly, the hardest part is planning my ui to accommodate both setups comfortably...

we've been going back and forth about adding a "status" feature to chi since we started this. it'd be like how sp custom front statuses could work...

the point of a status would be to convey system-wide state info: "xyz symptom", "at work", "afk", etc. it seems like that info is something that people like communicating, and it could be useful to have a place for that. they could show up in their own little displays, or as a special shelf in the front display...

mostly, i'm torn about if that is necessary when proxies exist... the main differences would be (1) proxies can send messages and statuses cannot, and (2) statuses appear in a unique place when "switched in" (maybe via their own special command, instead of a switch command).