Oh No! The Robots Have Taken Over

As part of his work, Chris and his team at Google are responsible for managing libraries for 150 APIs across 7 languages. This results in a crushing amount of toil, making it hard at times to both make forward progress and maintain what has been created.

When you own over 70 node repositories you have to get creative. So the team decided to make an army of sorts. An army of screaming, free roaming robots.

Bots can have a freeing effect on your engineering team. Come to hear how embracing automation has let a team of engineers do what they do best and let the toil fall to the machines.

Presented at Node+JS Interactive 2019: https://sched.co/T5HD

Transcript

1. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   Oh No! The Robots
   Have Taken Over!
   Chris Wilcox
   Engineer, Google Cloud
   @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   

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2. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   What’s a bot
   anyway?
   

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3. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev Photo by Lenny Kuhne on Unsplash
   

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4. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   

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5. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   

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6. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   What are bots
   good at?
   

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7. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   

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8. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   Levels of
   automation
   

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9. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
   

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10. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level Description Execution Monitoring Fallback System
    Capabilities
    1 Tooling, Basic
    Automation
    Human
    System
    Human Humam Scoped
    2 Human monitored
    automation.
    System Human Human Scoped
    3 System monitored
    automation with
    human fallback
    System System Human Scoped
    4 System handles
    fallback within a scope
    System System System Scoped
    5 System handles work
    with nebulous scope
    System System System Unscoped
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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11. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 1: Automate
    portions of your
    workflow.
    

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12. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 1 - Automate portions of workflow
    - Problem: Releasing a package takes multiple actions and it is
    easy to forget a bit.
    - Bot: Run script that tags main branch and publishes to
    package manager.
    The Simpsons, 20th Century Fox
    

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13. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 2: Automate discovery
    and work, but under
    supervision.
    

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14. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 2: Automate, but supervise
    - Problem: The script we authored to publish releases is
    easy to forget to run after we have a PR to update our
    version.
    - Bot: Automatically publish when a release PR is merged.
    Futurama, 20th Century Fox
    

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15. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 3: Let the
    robot do work for
    you, with limited
    supervision.
    

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16. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 3: Automate with limited supervision
    - Problem: We have issues go stale in our repository.
    - Bot: Reassign issues to other contributors when issues go
    stale.
    Boston Dynamics
    

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17. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 4: Stop
    Supervising, Stop
    Fallback support.
    

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18. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 4: Automate with *no* supervision
    - Problem: Sometimes branches other than master lie around
    after merges.
    - Bot: Delete stale branches from the repository.
    Matt Unsworth / YouTube
    

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19. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Level 5: The robot
    is your boss now.
    

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20. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    crwilcox @chriswilcox47
    

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21. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    TriStar Pictures, 1991
    

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22. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Writing a bot
    

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23. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Writing a bot to
    write bots.
    

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24. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Writing a bot to
    write bots.
    

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25. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Writing a bot to
    write bots.
    
    

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26. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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27. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Describe the
    scenario we
    want to solve
    “Can we run renovate
    pull request CI
    automatically?”
    

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28. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Identify the
    event
    - Initial PR
    - Every PR update
    - On merge to master
    - On issue creation
    

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29. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Decide if bot will
    alert or change.
    

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30. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Let’s build it
    already!
    

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31. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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32. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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33. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Just another
    node package.
    

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34. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Minimal deps.
    

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35. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    src
    

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36. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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37. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Setting up your
    environment to run
    a probot bot.
    

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38. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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39. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Run smee proxy
    

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40. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    npm start
    

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41. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Creating the
    GitHub App
    

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42. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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43. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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44. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Configure
    Permissions
    

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45. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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46. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Install the bot in a
    repository
    

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47. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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48. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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49. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Running a bot
    locally.
    

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50. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Set a few environment variables
    - APP_ID
    - WEBHOOK_SECRET
    - PRIVATE_KEY_PATH
    

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51. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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52. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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53. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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54. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Starting test bot locally
    

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55. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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56. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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57. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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58. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Deployment.
    

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59. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Google Cloud Functions
    

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60. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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61. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Google Cloud Storage + Google Cloud KMS
    Key Management Service maintains secrets so they aren’t hard
    coded in Google Cloud Function.
    

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62. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    

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63. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Google Cloud Build
    Builds and Deploys our bots once merged to HEAD.
    

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64. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Building
    npm install
    npm run compile
    mkdir -p "target"
    cp -r build "target"
    cp package.json "target/package.json"
    

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65. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Publishing
    functionname="function_name"
    gcloud functions deploy "$functionname" --trigger-http \
    --runtime nodejs10 \
    --region "$FUNCTION_REGION" \
    --set-env-vars
    DRIFT_PRO_BUCKET="$BUCKET",KEY_LOCATION="$KEY_LOCATION",KEY_
    RING="$KEY_RING",GCF_SHORT_FUNCTION_NAME="$functionname",PRO
    JECT_ID="$PROJECT_ID"
    

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66. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Maybe we can
    stop playing
    bad robots?
    

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67. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    https://github.com/googleapis/repo-automation-bots
    

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68. @chriswilcox47 https://chriswilcox.dev
    Thanks to the Googlers that contributed!
    And others...
    Benjamin Coe bcoe BenjaminCoe
    Jeff Ching chingor13
    Colin Nelson orthros orthros_
    Justin Beckwith justinbeckwith JustinBeckwith
    Chris Wilcox crwilcox chriswilcox47
    Alexander Fenster alexander-fenster
    Sofia Leon sofisl
    https://github.com/googleapis/repo-automation-bots
    

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