Orbit Bot — Dev Log

Built a simple Slack bot that pulls in space-related APIs and adds a bit of personality on top of them.

What’s in so far

The bot runs on Slack Bolt (Socket Mode) and is wired up with a handful of slash commands and one mention handler.

/nasapic pulls the NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day and displays it with a formatted Slack block (image or video depending on the response type)
/orbitfact returns a random space fact from a small built-in list
/orbitoracle gives a randomized “cosmic answer” for fun decision making
/orbitcatfact pulls live data from the Cat Fact API
/orbitlaunch simulates a multi-stage launch sequence using timed message updates
/orbitping checks responsiveness and returns latency
/orbithelp lists all available commands in a clean help panel

APIs used
NASA APOD API (Astronomy Picture of the Day)
Cat Fact API

Both are pulled using Axios and handled with basic error fallback messages.

Structure

Everything is currently in a single file for simplicity. Commands are separated clearly and use Slack Block Kit for formatting.

Environment variables handle tokens and API keys:

Slack bot token
Slack app token (Socket Mode)
NASA API key

What I learned / ran into
Slack Block Kit formatting matters a lot more than expected, small mistakes can break whole messages
Socket Mode makes local testing way easier than dealing with public endpoints
Keeping responses short is important