Hello!
I believe your little bot friends would be considered automated interaction with the system, because they perform a function (Search) automatically for you.
Running any kind of automated feature that you are not physically performing yourself to interact with the site servers falls under the categorization of the rule you have quoted.

Keeping a bookmark of a saved search & physically clicking on it yourself is not automation; having a script, interaction, or other function performed by a 'little bot friend' or another is both against the ToS because of the no-automated-script(ing) section & if you want to get into ai rights or ai functions lmao don't come for me robot friends 'don't allow others to use your account/no account-sharing'. <3
It may seem like semantics, but yes they really want you there, present, clicking through the game/function/site bookmark yourself, 100%, playing & interacting with the game yourself or it's against the rules.


If you'd like to be extra sure, you can always ask for clarification in Modbox! ^^

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To further clarify, If it helps you to think of it this way, check out the Code of Conduct as well (specifically "Cheating and other inappropriate game play") we (the players of the game) are also asked not to overly burden the server by opening too many tabs, not to spam, not to use any sort of auto-refresher function, and to make sure to wait for the pages to fully load before refreshing the page.
Even a super-fast player is asked to tone it down ! <3

A function like the one you're describing could send tons of 'pings' to the server (inquiries; asks; prompts; functions; etc.), way more than a human could even, and the alert function is automated in itself.
Even if you were to 'program' your little friend to only send X asks per minute/half-hour/etc. the time element is irrelevant & the 'expected strain on server' is also moot because you are not allowed to automatically interact with the site.

So if that logic helps by any means feel free to understand that no matter how you program, no matter if you try to circumvent or get around & have a polite little bot that doesn't cause too much strain/burden the server, you are not allowed to use that program to interact with Lioden.
Scripting, programming, automation is a complete no-go. ^^'

The only 'sanctified' sort of automatic functions (they still require you, the player, to click a button! <3) are the feed-all play-all and auto-nesting tools available for purchase & sold only by the site itself in Oasis, technically our Notification system on site that alerts you for Watched Trades, and the other tools offered by the site on the site for our use. <3

Hope this helps & as always when i'm trying to be helpful anyone reading is free to let me know if you have an official response otherwise.

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To clarify, I’m not taking a stance about robot or AI personhood when I call a bot a friend, lol. I tend to anthropomorphize code the second I’m done writing it, which is fun. Kind of like have a stuffed animal, but less comforting.

Oh, no, I can’t resist a prompt like that Here it comes.

Hell, I don’t actually believe that it’s possible for AI to have a subjective experience. I’m pretty sure consciousness/subjectivity requires the full complexity of biochemical electric/magnetic interactions in our brain, while we put a lot of work into cleaning probabilistic/unpredictable electron physics out of the physical building blocks of our computers so that we can work in binary at larger scales without errors. I don’t believe consciousness can be embedded in a computer as a physical system, because the brain is orders of magnitude more complex and uncertain/sensitive to physical conditions than any currently available computer that I’M aware of. But I’m just guessing

I’ve never actually coded a script for interacting with a website, so I would have liked the frivolous excuse to teach myself. It seemed likely to be a simple thing to start with

I already have bookmarked searches, so I’ll just keep doing that. It’s less work, really

I just thought that the “public search engines” part might be an intentional exemption for market searches, but alas!

Thank you for answering. Hope you don’t mind me getting sidetracked by your reference to AI rights, lol

Edit: and the overloading the server thing had occurred to me as a perfectly reasonable explanation for why this might not be allowed, even aside from the fact that “because we want players to do all of their playing for themselves” strikes me as a fine answer.

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(I should have added a playful tag or tone indicator of some sort, my apologies. )
All in good fun. <3

At this point I do believe we'd only ever have a 'coded' 'sense of self' but let's see what our descendants or those of modern programming (Sci-Fi~) can do. <3
I believe choosing another site that doesn't have similar T.o.S/Code of Conduct (so, likely not a website-based game unfortunately!) or creating your own domain/website in which to play (colored buttons? or some sort of mock ... artificial economy / stock system? of a kind) would be a better sandbox to play.

I believe the public search engine function describes specifically you, the player xD, typing a search key word into Google- so for example, we could search 'Sunrise news site: lioden.com' but we could not ask/tell/command a script to do it for us ..

Sounds lovely, I just like to be a little (over?) thorough in my responses.
Thank you for the fun! <3

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