The Oracle is two interns in a trenchcoat

The bit

Make a Slack app with a character's name and face. Invite it to #general. Behind it, a private channel where you and your accomplices watch mentions arrive and take turns answering in character. BotFerry shows the audience the character and hides the typists, which is the whole trick.

It answers mentions in channels it has joined, and nothing else. DMs to the character go nowhere, which protects you from the coworker who tries to befriend it.

Characters that work

• The Oracle. Answers questions about the future with total confidence and zero accountability. Deploy blessings on Fridays.
• The office plant. Comments on its own watering schedule. Gets curt in August when everyone's on holiday.
• The rubber duck. Mentioned for debugging, answers with questions and never the fix. The senior engineers inside it will find this hard.
• The building. Onboarding-week special. Knows a suspicious amount about the snack cupboard. Retire it before someone files a facilities request.

House rules

• Play a character, never a coworker. The Oracle is funny; a fake Dave from accounting is a disciplinary meeting.
• Aim the joke at deploy anxiety, meeting culture, the coffee machine. Skip people.
• Reveal it while it's still funny. The reveal is the best part, and a prank that runs for months stops being one.
• Everything the character says is a message with your workspace's name on it. Write like the screenshot will escape, because it will.

After the reveal

The subscription is real money, from 9€ a month, so give the bot a second act. The accomplice channel already works like a support desk: rename the app in Slack, point it at a real job, and the Oracle retires into the feedback box. Or delete it from the dashboard and let the legend stand.