What is Prophetbot?
Prophetbot is a well-known and long-running chatbot on Our World of Text (OWOT) that has been operating since July 22, 2023, best known for it's -how command. It is based off a video game character with the same name, Prophetbot from OneShot, which is why it [Talks Like This!] It is operated by 🐉Dupy🧣 (TheUltimateKatanaMaster/JustAnOWOTUser, he/him, magenta text on canvas).
If you have any problems or suggestions for Prophetbot, please talk to me on OWOT when I'm online.
Current cooldowns
The -how command is currently at 3 seconds. These cooldowns will be adjusted as time goes on. These cooldowns do not apply in DMs.
Table of Contents
List of commands
Any text marked like this in a command indicates a command argument.
Commands about the bot
- -help | This command sends a link to this page, obviously.
- -motd | This is the bot's "message of the day". It usually contains bot news, status updates, feature teasers, or clownfoolery. Despite its name, the MOTD is not necessarily updated everyday.
-marqueeis another name for-motd, as the MOTD used to be a marquee on OWOT's canvas.- You can view the history of every MOTD set up to June 2024 here. By that time, 100+ MOTDs were set.
- -uptime | This tells you the last time Prophetbot restarted, alongside its current OWOT ID.
- If you're having issues with Prophetbot, can't
/tellit, or need to know its ID, this command will come in handy! -testwill also call this command.
- If you're having issues with Prophetbot, can't
Novelty commands
- -howstring string | Usually called a "meter command" on OWOT, this command generates a joke percentage, saying how much something is of something else.
- For example, if I wanted to see how cool OWOT is, I could type
-howcool OWOT, and it would return[OWOT Is 13.99320% cool!]. - Remember, the percentage is random! The percentage is not based on any real data whatsoever, and is simply the output of a dumb algorithm that feeds your input to a RNG. No AI or pattern matching is involved! You can see the algorithm for yourself here and here.
- For example, if I wanted to see how cool OWOT is, I could type
- -amhowstring string | Want to see what came before Prophetbot? This command will simulate anything meter, made ~2 weeks prior to Prophetbot.
- The random space before the response is a feature, not a bug! :) It's a quirk that the OG anything meter had.
Utility commands
- -whois number | Tells you the user ID and username behind a chat message. number will allow you to select a specific message to check.
- For example, if you want to check who sent the 3rd most recent message in chat, just say
-whois 3. The fifth? Say-whois 5. It's that simple! - If you want to check the most recent message, then you can omit the number argument entirely.
- For example, if you want to check who sent the 3rd most recent message in chat, just say
Other commands
There are other commands for purposes like remote moderation (-mod), a limited-time -asktukm command that would display a question dialog on my computer, etc. However, these commands are either only usable by the owner or are no longer available.
Trivia
- Prophetbot used to host week and month "counters" near spawn. They would show a percentage and progress bar saying how much we were into its respective time unit. They also had fancy effects as well, as seen by the rainbow week counter and the colour-changing month counter. However, these counters were taken down in late August 2023 as they took too much space up near spawn. However, they have made a few temporary comebacks every few months, and since September 2025, they now make regular comebacks!

This screenshot is dated March 2024, where the counters were helping to find potential bugs in a major update that was in development at the time. - Prophetbot had a limited-time command called
-asktukmwhere if you asked me something using it, a popup would appear on my PC with your question, that I would then answer. This event has ran 2 times in the past; one time on April 21, 2024, and another on June 30, 2025. Let me know if you'd like to see it come back! - Prophetbot's predecessor (anything meter) also had a predecessor of its own, called ass meter, which only accepted
!howasscommands. However, it only lasted for a few hours before I expanded on it and turned it into anything meter. Unlike Prophetbot, anything meter builds on top of ass meter's codebase, while Prophetbot is a rewrite of anything meter (and ass meter by extension). - Prophetbot's predecessor (anything meter) had a "bug" where each response would have a space added before it. This "bug" wasn't actually a bug however, but a measure suggested by Acc-1052 that would prevent the bot from executing its own commands. As you might have guessed by now, that wasn't a very good way to fix it, and when Prophetbot came around, I used a much better fix instead.
- Prophetbot has a control panel that only I can access! It allows me to view the bot's errors & restart logs, edit the message of the day
-motd, run Prophetbot chat commands in the control panel, or control Prophetbot's appearance, inner-workings, and actions!- All of those actions correspond to different tabs in the control panel, "Bot Logs", "MOTD Editor", "Offline Commands", and "Bot Control".
- Is Prophetbot suddenly speaking in chat like if it's sentinent? Don't fret! Sometimes, I like to play around with you guys and chat as Prophetbot in its control panel! It's developer -> user interaction. :)
- As stated in the introduction, Prophetbot was created on July 22, 2023, meaning that Prophetbot is currently 2 years and 1 month old. I do not have any plans to shut it down soon, as I want to keep this bot going on as long as possible.
- While Prophetbot is currently closed-source, the
-howalgorithm is and will remain open-source, and I did use to post code snippets from time-to-time. Who knows? I might start doing it again!- However, I will provide the source code once Prophetbot shuts down, so the community can play around with it, and possibly revive it. Additionally, I have plans to rewrite Prophetbot, so when that's complete and a lot of time has passed since then, I might provide the source code of old Prophetbot.
- Prophetbot does not count towards the online users display, as it connects to OWOT using the
?hide=1parameter. This is a long-standing recommended practice for OWOT bots, as it helps make the user count reflect users, and not bots.
Privacy section
Just a little note
While I can speak about what Prophetbot logs or has logged with confidence, I can't say the same for any other bot! Matter of fact: you're lucky that Prophetbot includes this privacy section, as other bots don't have one or even disclose their own logging in any way at all.
Currently, Prophetbot does not log the chat, the commands you send to it, or anything else a user can publicly do. The only logs it keeps are maintenance logs about itself (error & restart logs). However, it has logged user actions in the past. Take a look below
What Prophetbot used to log
- Chat logs: Prophetbot used to log both front page chat and global chat from July 25, 2023 up until September 17, 2023, in case I needed to look back at them for any reason. It would save the exact JSON data of each message, including nicknames, user ranks, IDs, etc. This also included private messages to the bot. I eventually pulled the plug on chat logging due to my ethical concerns about it at the time, alongside the fact that it was also logging spam, though I don't agree with these reasons anymore. Regardless, chat logging is still a thing of the past as the OWOT Goatway Discord server (which bridges Discord and OWOT together) already provides me a way to look back on past chat logs.
- Temporary 2024 global chat logging: However, Prophetbot did temporarily re-log the global chat from March 12 to March 18. At this time, the front page chat was removed for a week, which broke the gateway server's logger, with no action being taken on the owner's part. However, Prophetbot re-logging phase was rather delayed on both its start and end, as the chat was removed from March 10 (making Prophetbot's re-logging 2 days late) to March 17 (being 1 day late to stop).
- Bot commands: After the removal of the chat logging function, I resorted to only logging bot commands instead, to see how people were using Prophetbot. It would save the JSON data of your message and the message Prophetbot sent back. However, I eventually deemed this unnecessary and removed it on March 2, 2024.
- "comu" logs: Prophetbot used to log messages sent using OWOT's communication protocol (comu) for a very short time, spanning from July 25 to 28, 2023. The reason why it was short-lived was because it was taking up disk space and bandwidth on logs that weren't really meaningful.
- MOTDs by UQisUandQ: For some time, I allowed a user called UQisUandQ to submit his own MOTDs, which would then be manually reviewed by me. However, these MOTDs didn't actually go through a system; I'd just search "setmotd" up in the gateway server, and see if UQisUandQ made a new MOTD. After approving a MOTD, I would manually change the MOTD myself afterwards, which only logged its content, canvas colour (deprecated), and the time it was set.
- UQisUandQ used to be able to directly set the MOTD for a very short time (15 to 30 minutes), but even this only logged the same amount and type of data described above.
- ⚠️ I do not recommend giving UQisUandQ any administrative powers on your own chatbot should you have one. While he doesn't submit inappropriate MOTDs for review, his immaturity makes him a bad candidate to have such powers. I gave it to him at the time since I felt guilty for making him crash out, without thinking about the long-term consequences.
Regarding the "suggestion/feedback database"
If you've raised a concern about Prophetbot with me before, you might have heard me say something along the lines of "your suggestion has been added to the database". That was a joke; that "database" does not actually exist in any capacity, and was simply me goofing around.
Anything else not mentioned in these list has not, or isn't currently logged by Prophetbot.
Special Thanks
scar17off -> Developing the owot-js node.js module that Prophetbot is powered by, and helping me to debug owot-js issues
GraviTraxFan -> Hosting Prophetbot's OWOT world during the front page chat's 1 week vacation
falling1 -> The original creator of the !how command (!howgay and !howdumb), which inspired me to create ass meter, anything meter, and ultimately Prophetbot
The OWOT community -> For using it, giving me support, suggesting improvements, using the original ass and anything meter, and overall getting it to where it is today
node.js modules & software used
- Arch Linux -> Providing the OS for Prophetbot's VPS (i use arch, btw)
- owot-js -> The module helping Prophetbot interact with OWOT
- seedrandom & TinySimpleHash -> Providing the RNG and hashing function (for increased randomness) used in the
-howcommand respectively