botsay(1)

📦 version 1.4.4, in arch rolling

🎀 botsay(1) — your new bestie in the terminal 🎀

okay so real talk: this is the manual page for botsay, and honestly? it's iconic. it's a User Commands situation, it lives in section 1, and by the end of this you're gonna be printing ASCII art robots like it's nothing. periodt. 💅

✨ NAME ✨

botsay — a utility for outputting text with an ASCII art robot 🤖💖

like, that's it. that's the whole vibe. you give it text, it gives you a robot saying your text. no cap, it's the best thing ever.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

botsay [-i ID] [-p] [-c] [-h] [--version] [MESSAGE]

so you've got your optional ID, your optional flags, and an optional MESSAGE — very "choose your own adventure", very main character energy. ✨

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

botsay generates an ASCII art robot with a speech bubble containing a message.

literally that's the whole thing and it ate. 🔥

here's the deets bestie:

  • if no message is provided as an argument, it reads from standard input — so you can just pipe stuff in, no biggie 🫶
  • if no ID is provided, a random bot ID is used — so every bot is a little mystery, a little surprise, a little ✨unique✨

💜 OPTIONS 💜

  • -i, --id ID — specify a custom bot ID to use for generating the ASCII art. want a specific bot? this is how you get your specific bot. 🎀
  • -p, --print — print the bot's ID after generating the ASCII art. so you can find out which bot you got and like, cherish it forever. 😭
  • -c, --color — enable rainbow mode (truecolor). 🌈 RAINBOW. MODE. need i say more. it's giving pride parade in your terminal.
  • -h, --help — show a help message and exit. the classic "what does this even do" escape hatch. 🙈
  • --version — print the version and exit. for when you gotta know what you're working with, fr fr. ⭐

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

okay so here's how you actually use it, live in the wild:

botsay 'Hello, world!'

classic. timeless. the "hello, world" of robot speech bubbles. 👑

echo Hello from stdin | botsay -c

and here's the piping moment — echo Hello from stdin fed straight into botsay -c, so your bot is saying it in rainbow mode. 🌈💀 this is the one. this is the moment.

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

botsay was written by Alexander F. Rødseth <xyproto@archlinux.org> — shoutout to the legend who blessed us with rainbow robots. 🫶👑

okay that's the whole page, bestie, you're basically a botsay expert now 🧚💖 go forth and make robots say things!!

this has been botsay, from the User Commands section, version date 2 May 2026 — catch you in the next manual page, mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from