Trivia bots

A trivia bot runs quiz games in a room. A moderator starts a game, the bot asks questions one at a time, everyone answers with a letter (A, B, C or D), and the bot keeps score. You choose the questions: use the ones it comes with, ask an AI chat like ChatGPT to write some on any topic, or write your own.

Quick start

1. In a room you created, tap the room name, then Bots, and install Trivia.
2. Type !trivia start in the room.
3. Everyone answers each question with A, B, C or D.

That's it. The bot comes with about 100 general-knowledge questions, so your first game needs no preparation. Read on to make it your own.

Add the bot to a room

1. Open a room you created. Only a room's creator can add bots to it.
2. Tap the room name at the top, then Bots.
3. Under Available, find Trivia and tap Install.

The bot joins the room and shows in the member list with a small robot mark. It comes with one set of questions, called Starter questions, about space, science, geography, history, books, sports, music, movies, nature, technology, food and maths.

On the room's Bots page, each installed bot has:

• On/off switch: while off, the bot leaves the room and ignores commands. Turning it off ends a running game without posting standings. Scores are kept.
• Gear icon: the bot's nickname, the room's trivia settings and Manage question banks.
• Trash icon: removes the bot from the room. Messages it posted stay, but this room's scores are deleted.

You can give the bot a photo or a new name from Profile → Bots. One trivia bot can be in several rooms, and each room has its own games, settings and scores.

Hosting a game

Only hosts can start and stop games. Hosts are the channel owner, channel admins, the person who made the room, and the room's moderators. To make someone a moderator, open the room's member list and tap the menu next to their name.

Starting

• !trivia start starts a game with the room's usual number of questions (10 unless you've changed it).
• !trivia start 5 starts a game of 5 questions. The number can go up to the room's maximum of 50.
• Questions are picked at random from the room's question set, and the same question won't come up twice in one game. If the set has fewer questions than you asked for, the game is shorter.
• Only one game can run in a room at a time.

What the room sees

ana:     !trivia start 3
Trivia:  🎯 Trivia time! 3 questions, 20s each. Reply with A, B, C or D.
         Your first answer counts, and the first correct one gets a bonus point.
Trivia:  ❓ Question 1/3 · Space
         Which planet is known as the Red Planet?
         A) Venus
         B) Mars
         C) Jupiter
         D) Mercury
         Reply A, B, C or D · 20s
ben:     b
carla:   C
dev:     B)
Trivia:  ✅ The answer was B) Mars.
         🥇 ben +2 · dev +1
         … two more questions …
Trivia:  🏁 Trivia over! Final standings:
         🥇 ben: 4 points
         🥈 dev: 3 points
         🥉 carla: 1 point

1. The bot announces the game: how many questions and how long each one runs.
2. It posts the first question with its category (if it has one), the four choices and the time limit.
3. When time is up, it shows the right answer and who got it, with their points.
4. After a short pause (5 seconds unless you change it), the next question appears.
5. After the last question it posts the final standings for the game.

Stopping early

!trivia stop ends the game straight away and shows who's winning so far. Points already won are kept.

Playing

Anyone in the room can play; there's nothing to join.

• Answer with a message that is just the letter. Small or capital letters both work, and so does a letter followed by ) or ..
• Only your first answer counts. Sending another letter afterwards changes nothing, so think before you type.
• Your answer has to arrive before time runs out.
• Answer in the room itself. Answers sent as a reply in a thread don't count.
• Chat as much as you like during a game. Only messages that are a single letter count as answers.

Scoring and leaderboards

• "First" means whose answer reached Gabbex first, so two people can't tie for the extra point.
• After each question, the bot lists everyone who got it right, fastest first, with 🥇 for the fastest.
• At the end of each game, the bot shows the top 10 players for that game.
• Total scores add up over every game in the room. !trivia top shows the top 10, and !trivia score shows your own total.
• Scores belong to the room, so the same bot in another room has a separate leaderboard. If two players have the same total, whoever reached it first is ranked higher.

Commands

Type these as normal messages in the room. Small or capital letters both work.

If someone who isn't a host tries to start or stop a game, the bot replies "Only room admins and moderators can start or stop trivia."

So the room doesn't fill up with bot messages, the bot answers !trivia top, !trivia score and !trivia at most once every 30 seconds (you can change this). If someone asks again sooner, the bot stays quiet.

Room settings

On the room's Bots page, tap the gear icon next to the trivia bot. Only the person who made the room can change these.

• A game can have up to 50 questions.
• Changes to the timing start with the next question, even during a game.
• If you pick a different question set during a game, the current game carries on with its set and the new one is used next time.

Question sets (banks)

The app calls a set of questions a question bank. A trivia bot can have up to 20 of them, for example one for movies, one for your city's history and one for your team's inside jokes. Each room chooses which one it plays.

To see them, either:

• open Profile → Bots, tap the menu next to the trivia bot, then Questions; or
• in a room, open the bot's settings and tap Manage question banks.

Each bank is shown as a card with how many questions it has and which rooms play it. The buttons along the bottom of each card:

New question bank asks for a name and whether to start with a copy of the starter questions. The new bank then opens so you can add questions to it.

Inside a bank

• The card at the top shows how many questions it has and which rooms play it. Its pencil button renames the bank, and its copy button copies all the questions so you can save them somewhere or paste them into another bank.
• Add questions is where you add new questions, explained in the next section.
• Below that you'll find every question with its choices, and the right answer is shown in green with a tick. You can search, and tap the trash button to delete a question.
• Reset to starter questions replaces everything in the bank with the starter set.

Writing questions with AI

The easiest way to add questions is to let an AI chat write them. Gabbex writes the request for you; you copy it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other AI chat, and it sends back questions ready for the bot.

1. Open the bank you want to fill.
2. Under Generate with AI, type a topic, how many questions you want (up to 100 at a time) and pick how hard they should be: easy, medium, hard or mixed.
3. Tap Copy prompt. (A "prompt" is just the request you send to the AI.)
4. Open your AI chat, paste the request and send it.
5. Copy the AI's whole answer. It's fine if it includes extra words around the questions; Gabbex ignores them.
6. Back in Gabbex, paste it in the box under Paste the JSON. Gabbex checks it right away.
7. When you see something like "20 questions ready", choose Replace the bank or Add to the bank and tap Save.

The request Gabbex writes looks like this. You don't need to change anything in it:

Write 20 multiple-choice trivia questions about: 90s movies.
Difficulty: a mix of easy, medium and hard.

Rules:
- Every question has exactly 4 choices. Each choice is an object with a "key"
  ("A", "B", "C" or "D", each used once) and a "choice" (the answer text).
- Exactly one choice is correct. "answer" is the key of the correct choice, not its text.
- Spread the correct keys evenly across A, B, C and D.
- Keep each question under 300 characters and each choice under 100 characters.
- Make the wrong choices believable, and double-check that every fact is accurate.
- "category" is optional: a short label of up to 32 characters.
- Don't repeat a question.

Return only the JSON, no commentary, in exactly this format:
{ ...an example question, like the one in "How questions are written" below... }

Getting good questions

• Be specific. "Studio Ghibli films" or "Cebu history and landmarks" beats "movies" or "history".
• Mention your audience. Add it to the topic: "dinosaurs, for kids aged 8–10" or "Kubernetes, for experienced engineers".
• Add more a bit at a time. Ask for 50, save with Add to the bank, then ask the same chat for "50 more, different from the ones above". If a question is already in the bank, it's skipped.
• Mix and match. You can paste answers from different AI chats into the same bank.

AI chats sometimes get facts wrong. Have a quick look through the questions before a big game and delete any you're not sure about.

How questions are written

Questions are saved as JSON, a tidy way of writing lists that apps can read. You don't have to learn it: the AI writes it for you, and Gabbex tells you exactly what to fix if something's off. If you'd like to write or change questions yourself, each one looks like this:

{
  "questions": [
    {
      "question": "Which planet is known as the Red Planet?",
      "choices": [
        { "key": "A", "choice": "Venus" },
        { "key": "B", "choice": "Mars" },
        { "key": "C", "choice": "Jupiter" },
        { "key": "D", "choice": "Mercury" }
      ],
      "answer": "B",
      "category": "Space"
    }
  ]
}

Keep the quote marks, commas and brackets exactly as in the example. Small or capital letters both work for the letters, and the four answers can be listed in any order: the bot always shows them as A, B, C, D.

When something's wrong

If any question has a problem, nothing is saved and Gabbex lists what to fix. Each problem starts with which question it's about: questions[0] is the first question, questions[1] the second, and so on. For example, this question leaves out the letters and gives the answer's words instead of its letter:

{ "question": "2 + 2?", "choices": ["3", "4", "5", "22"], "answer": "4" }

questions[0].choices[0]: must be { "key": "A", "choice": "..." }
questions[0].choices[1]: must be { "key": "A", "choice": "..." }
questions[0].choices[2]: must be { "key": "A", "choice": "..." }
questions[0].choices[3]: must be { "key": "A", "choice": "..." }
questions[0].answer: must be the key of the correct choice (A, B, C or D)

If the questions came from an AI, the easiest fix is to reply to it: "Please follow the format exactly, with a letter for each answer and the letter of the right answer." Then copy its new answer.

Saving, replacing and limits

• Replace the bank deletes the questions already in the bank and saves the new ones instead. Gabbex asks you to confirm first.
• Add to the bank keeps what's there and adds the new questions. Any question that's already in the bank is skipped, and Gabbex tells you how many.
• Either all the questions you pasted are saved, or none are, so a bank is never left half-updated.
• Copy as JSON copies all of a bank's questions, so you can keep a backup, change them, or paste them into another bank or bot.

Tips for great games

• Announce it. Post a time ahead ("Trivia at 8pm!") so people are around when you type !trivia start.
• Match the timer to the crowd. 15–20 seconds suits quick general knowledge; give 30–45 seconds for harder questions or players on phones.
• Keep games short. 5–10 questions holds attention; run a second game if people want more.
• Theme your nights. Keep a bank for each theme and switch the room's bank before the game.
• Share the hosting. Make regulars moderators so they can run games when you're away.
• Celebrate the leaderboard. !trivia top after a game gives the regulars something to chase.

Questions and troubleshooting

• "Only room admins and moderators can start or stop trivia": ask the person who made the room, a channel admin or the channel owner to make you a moderator.
• "A game is already running": only one game can run in a room at a time. Wait for it to finish, or type !trivia stop.
• "No game is running": there was no game to stop.
• "This room's question bank is empty": add questions to the room's bank, choose another bank in the bot's settings, or reset the bank to the starter questions.
• The game ended early with "That's every question in the bank!": the bank ran out of questions. Add more, or start a shorter game.
• My answer didn't count: send only the letter, in the room (not in a thread), before time runs out. Only your first answer to each question counts.
• The bot ignores !trivia top: it answered one moments ago. Wait 30 seconds, or shorten the wait in the settings.
• The bot doesn't respond at all: check it's switched on in the room's Bots page.
• I don't see Bots in the room menu: only the person who made the room can manage its bots.
• Can I change a single question? Not directly. Delete it and add the corrected version, or tap Copy as JSON, fix it, and paste everything back with Replace the bank.
• Will changing a bank mess up a game that's running? No. The current question keeps its answer, and the game carries on with the questions left in its bank.
• What happens to scores if I switch banks? Nothing. Scores belong to the room, not the bank.
• How do I reset the leaderboard? Removing the bot from the room and installing it again starts the room's scores from zero.