Tag Archives: bot

bots

Don’t Write Release Notes – Use Release-Relay

You know that feeling.
It’s Friday afternoon.
The sun is shining (or the rain is pouring, depending on where you live), and your team has just wrapped up a sprint.
You’ve deployed code, fixed bugs, and maybe even sneaked in a feature or two.
You’re ready to close your laptop and grab a cold beverage.

But wait.
A Slack notification pops up.

“Hey, can you send out the release notes?”

The dread sets in.
You open GitHub.
You scroll through the closed Pull Requests. “Fix typo,” “Update dependency,” “WIP,” “Revert ‘WIP’,” “Actually fix the thing,” “Merge branch ‘main’ into ‘feature/fix-typo’.” It’s a mess. Organizing this into something your manager (or your users) can actually read is a task that sucks the soul right out of your weekend.

Meet the “Release Notes Generator”

I built a tool—let’s call it Release-Relay.
It’s a CLI tool that does the heavy lifting for you.
It connects to your GitHub repository, grabs all the merged PRs between two dates, and turns them into a beautiful, structured Markdown report.

But it’s not just a git log dump.
Oh no, we have standards here.

Continue reading →
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bots

Hey Google, Talk To Highway 80 Conditions

[Updated 8/2025: Try this web app]

Next time you are driving to Tahoe you don’t need to open the phone, navigate to the browser and check if the road is closed (or not).

You can just ask the Google Assistant: “Hey Google, Talk To Highway 80 Conditions”.

You will get the most updated data about the road like in the example below:

Screenshot 2018-03-22 11.38.28

Please ignore the text formatting (which I’ll improve in the near future) as it should be use as voice only while you are driving.

Check it on the Google Assistant or on the web here.

If you are using Telegram check this.

Be safe!

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bots

OK Google, Talk To Northstar Pow Day!

Northstar pow day action on google

Northstar Pow Day – Action on Google

Last week, we had a big storm at Tahoe.

I thought it might be great if with one quick question (while you washing our face in the morning) you can learn if it’s a powder day.
After all, when there is a pow day, you should close the shop and run for the slopes, no?

The result is here: pow-day-northstar.glitch.me and you can find the code at GitHub.

If you are on a mobile device, click here to check it on the assistant, or just say “Hey Google, talk to Northstar pow day”.

Have fun!

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bots

Hey Google, Talk to Coffee Trivia Game

During the holidays, I had a bit of time to do some fun stuff with Actions on Google.

It started with an idea that a runner friend brought up during a long run and the results is “OK Google, Talk to Western State Race“. If you are an ultra trail runner, you are smiling now, right?

Later, it was around another passion – good coffee. I used the templates for Google Assistant to create a fun trivia game. It’s super easy, as you only need to copy a google sheet and update it with your questions and answers.

You can check the result by clicking here (on mobile) or just say something like “OK Google, Talk to Coffee Trivia Game”. Continue reading →

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bots

Get Users to Your App For The Google Assistant

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Did you know that your app for the Google Assistant can reach users on millions of devices? Over 100 million devices (and many more in the future) already have the Google Assistant with them so when users wish to use your app, you are already there. There is no friction. In this post we will focus on the methods you can use in order to reach users.

There are 4 ways for users to get to your app for the Google Assistant through:

  1. Explicit triggering
  2. Implicit Triggering
  3. The Google Assistant Directory
  4. The Assistant Directory link

Let’s go a bit deeper into each one. Continue reading →

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bots

Google Assistant – Why? How?

Bots are going to be big by 2021

In the past few years, the buzz about conversational experiences and digital assistants has increased. As you can see above, eMarketer is predicting that 87% of B2C marketers in the US will use chatbots and digital assistants  in their marketing efforts by 2021. 

We can see these days that conversational computing and digital assistants represent a new fundamental computing wave that brands can use more.

A big misconception is that the Google Assistant is ‘just’ for Google Home or other smart speakers.

It’s also on mobile (Android and iOS) devices (over 100+ millions devices) and in many other devices.

Aog growing devices

So your users are there already and you can reach to them without any friction.

The conversations users are having with the Assistant are not just about things that could be answered on Google Search. The Assistant helps with more than getting information – it helps you get things done.

From enjoying music and movies, ordering pizza and making restaurant reservations to controlling your smart devices and calling your best friend, the Google Assistant helps everyone be more productive in their world.
Continue reading →

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bots

Create An Assistant App Without Any Code

At the moment, there are few options to create apps for the Google Assistant that do not involve any code.

We call them “existing templates” as you can see in the image above.

When you open the action on google console page you will see all the current options: trivia, personality quiz and flash cards games. In this post we will see how easy it will be to create a new flash cards game that will work on the Google Assistant.

Let’s go with helping people learn something new, ok?

First, you need to go to: console.actions.google.com and click on “Add/Import Project”.

Continue reading →

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bots

How to Build a Google Assistant App?

Apps for the Google Assistant are the gateway for your users to engage with your services through Google Home, Android phones, iPhones, and in the future, through every experience where the Google Assistant is available.

Continue reading →

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bots

How To Pass The Google Assistant App Review?

After you build your Assistant App it is time to submit it for review and publish it to the world. You should test your app and make sure that it’s ready for prime time.

When you submit your app, Google’s reviewers use and test it to find issues, bugs, or policy violations. To ensure a quick approval, you should use this checklist and… keep reading.

In this post, we will focus on 4 aspects that are important to ensure your app will pass the review quickly and be a success story. Continue reading →

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bots

Natural Language Processing Tools

The powerful thing we got these days is the option to choose the best tool for the job. When it comes to building our new Google Assistant App or any other type of bot, we should use a natural language processing (NLP) tool.

Here are the tools I found for NLP:

  • API.AI – This tool give users new ways to interact with your product by building engaging voice and text-based conversational apps. It also use machine learning to understand what users are saying (NLP) and it got a very nice set of integration you can leverage. You can deploy your bot to: Google Assistant, Telegram, Slack, Twitter, Skype, Viber, Kik, Cortana, Alexa and Facebook Messenger.

Continue reading →

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