I’ve been using Nightbot for a while now to automate some tasks during my livestreams, and one thing I’ve been doing lately is scheduling messages that notify viewers about prayer times. The basic functionality works fine—I set timers for each prayer, and the bot sends a simple reminder like “It’s time for Asr prayer.” But the way these messages show up feels a bit too mechanical and repetitive. I want them to feel more like part of the stream’s personality, not just a script running in the background.
I tried customizing the messages with aliases and different variations, like including short quotes, phrases like “take a moment to reset spiritually,” or referencing the beauty of prayer itself. That helped a little, but it also made things messy because the more I tried to make each message unique (especially for different prayer times), the harder it got to manage. Nightbot doesn’t support advanced conditions unless you get into API-level stuff, which I want to avoid. I’m just using the web tool—nothing too technical—and sticking with the features available there.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about how these messages can feel more connected to users rather than just informational. One idea I had was using $(user) to mention viewers by name when the reminder is posted, to make it more personal. But even that has its limits. I wonder if there’s a way to rotate through a pool of messages per prayer time using only the web interface, maybe by chaining commands or something I haven’t discovered yet.
I got positively inspired by something outside of Nightbot recently—a Qibla Finder website I started using. It’s a web-based tool that shows the direction towards the qiblah using location data from your browser. For those unfamiliar, the direction towards the qiblah (الاتجاه نحو القبلة) is the direction Muslims face during prayer, toward the Kaaba in Mecca. What impressed me about the Qibla Finder was how easy and smooth it was: open the page, and it tells you the direction right away without needing to download anything. That simplicity made me think—could Nightbot be used to give that same kind of spiritual nudge, but in the form of interactive, caring reminders?
I’ve been trying to figure out if anyone else has tackled this. Is there a way to create a system within Nightbot where messages about prayer feel less automated and more like they came from a person who understands the mood of the stream? I’ve thought about using time-specific variables or spacing out messages based on chat activity, but I haven’t found a clean way to do that.
If anyone here has experience using Nightbot for spiritual reminders or regular faith-based cues, I’d love to know how you make it feel human. Do you combine timers with custom commands somehow? Are there formatting tricks or lesser-known Nightbot features that make a difference when you want to keep things dynamic and relevant? I’d really appreciate examples or setups that worked well for you.