Automated Trading Bot

I've looked around for a while on the forums for information about potential non-forum trading and haven't found much other than "improvements may be coming". So I'm starting this thread.

Lets face it, forum based trading is kind of terrible. If you want to sell a large amount of stuff it's just difficult all the way through. Thank god for poe.xyz.is but even with that I find it challenging to find times that myself and buyers can overlap to execute the actual trade.

I'm a software engineer by trade and what I would love to do is write a tradebot. A little bot who would stay logged in all day when I'm at work and all night while I'm asleep. He would just stand in town and if someone messaged him in the correct format then he would respond, party invite, retrieve the item from stash, and run the trade to completion. Obviously this would only work for things with a set price, but I would be happy to maintain his database.

I have two issues: first, I don't know where to start at creating a bot for this game. I assume there's not a published API since they don't like most bots. I guess I could write a janky screen-watching bot (clicking on x/y coordinates and looking for colors) but if anyone knows of better resources I would love to hear about them.

Second: I don't want to violate GGG's terms of service. They're a great bunch and I don't want them to feel I'm cheating. I would be happy to 'register' the bot somehow, and I would absolutely make the code open source one I had it working, if only to fend off worries of malware. The bot would never actually play, he would just hang out in town.

How would the community (and GGG if you're reading this) feel about this project? I welcome any comments, especially if anyone out there has resources to recommend to get the project off the ground.

Thanks,
Tawombat

Dear Tawombat,

Automated "bot" scripts are against any and every ToS/EULA/whatever ever.

Sincerely,
Any and every company ever

GGG commented that automation in such an extent is against their policy.
They allow quality of life macros but automatized scripts are prohibited. Sorry.

If you need further information or want to help them, just E-Mail support@grindinggear.com.
You don't need to worry, they don't recklessly swing the ban-hammer on anyone asking questions.