Greetings fellow Synchronet sysops, at Fireside BBS I embrace AI as a means to link the retro with the modern. I've created a new OpenAI door that allows me to pass a prompt to it via an .ini file and it will return the results and display them in a paged format to the user. You'll see it as you log into my BBS. It also has sections in the .ini file to define multiple prompts and you can call them via the command line parameters passed to it. So I can define stuff like..

*Give Me 10 Hot 100 Songs For This Day In History, Sorted By Year
*Give Me 10 World News Articles For This Day In History, Sorted By Year
*Give Me 5 Christian Inspirational Quotes
*Give Me 10 Top Rated TV Shows For This Day In History, Sorted By Year
*Give Me 10 Worldwide Weather Facts For This Day In History, Sort By Year *Pretty much anything really...

The results can be saved and then only refreshed on a new day, so OpenAI is not hit more than once a day for each prompt.

It's been fun just seeing what I can make it do.
Here's an example of a weather related prompt...

=== Fireside BBS Weather Facts For This Day In History ===

1. **1888** The Great Blizzard of 1888, one of the most severe recorded blizzards in American history, began on January 14 and lasted through January 17, paralyzing the Northeast with up to 55 inches of snow and winds exceeding 45 miles per hour.

2. **1912** On January 14, the town of Eskimo Point (now Arviat) in Canada recorded temperatures down to -52øC (-61.6øF), illustrating the extreme cold snaps that can affect the Arctic regions during mid-winter.

3. **1929** A rare snowstorm engulfed parts of the southern United States, including Florida, on January 14, an event of considerable meteorological interest due to the unusual latitude of snow precipitation.

4. **1943** The Soviet Union faced one of its harshest cold waves during World War II, with temperatures on January 14 plunging to below -40øC (-40øF) in parts of Western Russia, deeply affecting soldiers and civilians alike.

5. **1950** On January 14, a major ice storm struck Ontario, Canada, resulting in widespread power outages and extensive damage to infrastructure due to heavy glaze ice accumulation, highlighting the hazards of freezing rain events.

Any key to continue AI-CHAT, Lone Wolf Software

I know some folks seem to be scared $h..less about AI and APIs, which is ok. I'm fine running the door exclusively, lol. OpenAI allows me to set a monthly cap on what I spend, I have mine set to $5.00 USD. So far in testing I have made 179 requests and used 6.13k tokens and it has cost me 4 cents. So I figure at that rate, a prompt making a call a day (remember it's cached for the day) will cost me about a dime a year. Sam Altman will not get rich off of the door's usage. If curious, you can check the door out at firesidebbs.com:23231, its an event that runs at logon after AI-WX's Current Weather Conditions event.

thanks folks,
Lonewolf
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þ Synchronet þ Fireside BBS - AI-WX - firesidebbs.com:23231

On 14 Jan 2026, Lonewolf said the following...

Altman will not get rich off of the door's usage. If curious, you can check the door out at firesidebbs.com:23231, its an event that runs at logon after AI-WX's Current Weather Conditions event.

this is an ad. post it in the ads section

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi

Re: Re: Fireside BBS and AI
By: fusion to Lonewolf on Thu Jan 15 2026 04:45 am

Altman will not get rich off of the door's usage. If curious, you can check the door out at firesidebbs.com:23231, its an event that runs at logon after AI-WX's Current Weather Conditions event.

this is an ad. post it in the ads section

Sorry but I'm a Syncronet sysop talking to other sysops about something I wrote for sysops, is this not a good echo to do that in? My message wasn't geared towards users.

Lonewolf
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þ Synchronet þ Fireside BBS - AI-WX - firesidebbs.com:23231

Re: Fireside BBS and AI
By: Lonewolf to All on Wed Jan 14 2026 08:51 pm

Greetings fellow Synchronet sysops, at Fireside BBS I embrace AI as a means to link the retro with the modern. I've created a new OpenAI door that allows me to pass a prompt to it via an .ini file and it will return the results and display them in a paged format to the user. You'll see it as you log into my BBS. It also has sections in the .ini file to define multiple prompts and you can call them via the command line parameters passed to it. So I can define stuff like..

*Give Me 10 Hot 100 Songs For This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give Me 10 World News Articles For This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give Me 5 Christian Inspirational Quotes *Give Me 10 Top Rated TV Shows For This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give Me 10 Worldwide Weather Facts For This Day In History, Sort By Year *Pretty much anything really...

An honest question - What do you think is the advantage of using AI to do this? I imagine there may be traditional services or software that will do this as well. I'm not entirely sure if there's a significant benefit to using AI to do this, rather than perhaps as a single way to prompt for anything.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Fireside BBS and AI
By: Nightfox to Lonewolf on Thu Jan 15 2026 11:55 am

means to link the retro with the modern. I've created a new OpenAI door that allows me to pass a prompt to it via an .ini file and it will return the results and display them in a paged format to the user. You'll see it as you log into my BBS. It also has sections in the .ini file to define multiple prompts and you can call them via the command line parameters passed to it. So I can define stuff like..

An honest question - What do you think is the advantage of using AI to do this? I imagine there may be traditional services or software that will do this as well. I'm not entirely sure if there's a significant benefit to using AI to do this, rather than perhaps as a single way to prompt for anything.

Thanks for the question and for being nice, that is appreciated. You pretty much answered your own question, the ease in which you can hit a single source and prompt for anything is the advantage. I was looking for a source for Weather in History for my BBS and could not find one. So I thought, I'll ask ChatGPT and it returned what I wanted without much fuss. So I thought it would be worth taking a stab at creating a door that would display the results of my prompt to the user. So now I've taken it a step farther and created an .ini file where you can define prompts with a section tag, like [TechNews] that contains a prompt for 10 tech news items for this day in history. You can then pass that tag name on the command line and it then displays the 10 items. I wrote a dozen prompts in about 30 minutes last night. So, compare that to trying to find a conventional source for the same and I think you can see the advantage in ease and speed. Plus its easy to tell OpenAI to format the data how you want it returned. The prompts can be anything you want info on. I did stuff like Word of the Day, It's National <blank> Day, Recipe of the Day. I also did Top 10 Most Popular Bulletin Boards, you made that list, I didn't lol.

Top 10 Chuck Norris jokes? If you can think of info you want to display, you can probably craft a prompt to gather that info, even from disparate sources and have it assembled in a fashion that would be useful for whatever the theme of your board is.

Lonewolf
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þ Synchronet þ Fireside BBS - AI-WX - firesidebbs.com:23231

On 15 Jan 2026, fusion said the following...

* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi

fwiw, I will be in Michigan the first week in April. Glad I can go visit every ytear now. Esp since I'm only a 4 hour drive away -- customs wait time notwithstanding.

... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
* Origin: On the Brink BBS - Grand Island, NY USA

Re: Fireside BBS and AI
By: Nightfox to Lonewolf on Thu Jan 15 2026 11:55 am

*Give Me 10 Hot 100 Songs For This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give
Me 10 World News Articles For This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give
Me 5 Christian Inspirational Quotes *Give Me 10 Top Rated TV Shows For
This Day In History, Sorted By Year *Give Me 10 Worldwide Weather Facts
For This Day In History, Sort By Year *Pretty much anything really...

An honest question - What do you think is the advantage of using AI to do this? I imagine there may be traditional services or software that will do this as well. I'm not entirely sure if there's a significant benefit to using AI to do this, rather than perhaps as a single way to prompt for anything.

Not to mention that it'll hallucinate and give the wrong information every once in awhile. "Give me 10 hot 100 songs for this day in history!" could include songs that never made it to that list, or songs that are new today. or even songs that charted on a random week in September.

It's not smart. It's an advanced version of the autopredict on your phone messaging app.

...It's important that I NOT know.

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þ Synchronet þ War Ensemble BBS - The sport is war, total war - warensemble.com

On 18 Jan 2026, Warp 4 said the following...

On 15 Jan 2026, fusion said the following...

* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi

fwiw, I will be in Michigan the first week in April. Glad I can go
visit every ytear now. Esp since I'm only a 4 hour drive away --
customs wait time notwithstanding.

right on. duno if you were thinking maybe have a little sysop hangout or something.. maybe grab a brewski somewhere in town or nearby

maybe i can start throwing rocks and see if quetwo is still around. or i know deuce is nearby as well ..

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi

Re: Re: Fireside BBS and AI
By: Warp 4 to fusion on Sun Jan 18 2026 08:48 am

fwiw, I will be in Michigan the first week in April. Glad I can go
visit every ytear now. Esp since I'm only a 4 hour drive away --
customs wait time notwithstanding.

why would you go through customs?
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þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::

MRO wrote to Warp 4 <=-

fwiw, I will be in Michigan the first week in April. Glad I can go
visit every ytear now. Esp since I'm only a 4 hour drive away --
customs wait time notwithstanding.

why would you go through customs?

Well, it's not optional.

When you cross an international boundary, that's what you do.

Duh.



... Your proctologist called - he found your head.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL