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dev:manual:automations:triggers-and-hotkeys

Table of Contents

Create triggers and hotkeys

Triggers react to MUD text. Hotkeys react to the keyboard. Both can send plain commands without a script.

Create a trigger

This trigger sends eat bread when the MUD prints exactly You are hungry.

  1. Open Automations and choose Create trigger.
  2. Set Name to eat-when-hungry.
  3. Leave the first pattern type on Match.
  4. Enter ^You are hungry\.$ as the pattern. The backslash makes the period literal.
  5. Enter You are hungry. in Test against a line. The pattern's status dot should show a match.
  6. Leave Behavior on Send as text and enter eat bread in Script.
  7. Choose Create trigger.

A trigger with a precise hunger pattern, successful test line, and eat bread action

Test while watching the session. Disable the trigger if the MUD uses the same sentence in room descriptions, help text, or player messages.

Use several pattern rows

Add a Match row when another pattern may start the same trigger. Add an Anti-match row to prevent firing on a line that also contains an unwanted form. Raw regex is for matching the unprocessed incoming line; use it only when formatting or protocol-adjacent text makes a normal match insufficient.

A prompt may arrive without a newline. Saved triggers created in the window match completed lines; a script author can opt a script-created trigger into prompt matching. Use that option only for a pattern deliberately written for prompts, because it can run more often than a line trigger.

Captured text works in a plain action just as it does for an alias. For ^You receive (\d+) gold\.$, an action can refer to the amount as $1.

Create a hotkey

  1. Choose Create hotkey.
  2. Give it a name such as move-north.
  3. Click Shortcut, then press the key combination.
  4. Leave Behavior on Send as text.
  5. Enter north in Script, then choose Create hotkey.

A text hotkey named move-north with its shortcut and north action

Choose combinations that do not conflict with text editing, operating-system shortcuts, or accessibility tools. A hotkey belongs to its session; it fires when an input owned by that session has focus.

Stop an automation quickly

Open Automations and turn off the item's enabled switch. If a trigger is sending too quickly to work safely, disconnect first, open the profile offline, and disable or repair it there.

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