Second Life Bots · 2026-07-15 · 7 min read

Second Life Bots: The Complete Guide

A Second Life bot is an automated program running on a Second Life avatar account. That single idea covers a lot of ground: the greeter that welcomes you into a store, the manager that sends group invites at 3am, the NPC bartender in a roleplay sim, and, increasingly, AI hosts that hold real conversations with visitors. This guide covers what bots can do in 2026, what Linden Lab's rules actually say, how to set your first one up, and how the platforms differ.

What is a Second Life bot?

Technically, a bot is any client that logs into an avatar account and acts without a human driving every click. It connects through the same protocol as a viewer, so from the grid's perspective a bot is a resident: it stands in a region, receives IMs and local chat, and can speak, teleport, and pay like anyone else.

What makes it a bot is the automation layered on top: scripted responses, scheduled actions, event-driven behavior, and lately, large language models that generate replies in a persona you choose.

Are bots allowed in Second Life?

Yes, and this is worth getting right before anything else.

Linden Lab's Scripted Agent policy covers automated accounts. The rules in practice:

• Run the bot on its own avatar, not your main. Create a dedicated account for it.
• Flag that account as a Scripted Agent on secondlife.com. This tells Linden Lab the account is automated, and keeps it out of systems meant for humans (like counting toward region traffic in ways that matter).
• Follow the same conduct rules as everyone else. A bot that spams or harasses gets its owner in trouble, because the owner is responsible for what it does.

We are direct about this in our own product: unattended automation makes an account a Scripted Agent, so set it up as one. A compliant bot is a durable bot.

Why residents run bots

The gap bots fill is staffing. Second Life stores, clubs, and communities run around the clock, and their owners do not. Presence without service is a mannequin; bots turn an always-online avatar into someone who actually answers.

The common jobs:

• Greeting. Welcoming arrivals by name, pointing them to the demo wall or the event floor.
• Customer service. Answering the same twenty questions about redeliveries, sizes, and prices, instantly and politely, every time.
• AI conversation. Holding open-ended chat in a persona that fits the venue: helpful for a store, mysterious for a haunted sim.
• Moderation. Watching local chat for banned words or rule-breaking and warning, logging, or escalating.
• Marketing and outreach. Messaging visitors about a new release, or broadcasting an event to the region, with rate limits so it stays welcome.
• Group management. Automated invites, notices, and membership handling: the classic bot workload that services like SmartBots built their reputation on.
• Roleplay NPCs. Characters that populate a story world; platforms like LifeBots focus on this niche.

Types of Second Life bots

By how they run, every option falls into three shapes:

1. Self-hosted bots. Open-source frameworks you run on your own machine or server. Maximum control, maximum maintenance; you are the sysadmin. The Second Life wiki's bot software comparison is the traditional map of this territory.
2. Hosted bot services. You hand a service the bot account's credentials and configure behavior from their dashboard. SmartBots is the long-standing name here, particularly for group tools.
3. Bots built into a client. The newest shape, and the one we build: Thunder Viewer is a browser-based Second Life client with the bot layer built in, so the same avatar you chat from can also greet, answer, and moderate when you step away. No separate service, no server of your own.

How to set up your first bot

The path is the same regardless of platform:

1. Create a dedicated avatar for the bot on secondlife.com.
2. Flag it as a Scripted Agent in the account settings.
3. Pick where it runs: self-hosted framework, hosted service, or a client with bots built in.
4. Give it a home. Most bots live at a store, club, or hub. Get land permissions sorted with the estate owner if it is not your parcel.
5. Configure behavior. With Thunder Viewer as the example: sign in with the bot avatar, open Manage Bots, and switch on what you need. Pick a persona (helpful, funny, professional, sweet, mysterious), set triggers (reply to IMs, reply when mentioned, custom wake words), write instant FAQ answers for the questions you get daily, and set up arrival greetings with a cooldown.
6. Add guardrails before scale. Turn on moderation rules if the venue needs them, set marketing messages to reasonable volumes, and route a copy of everything to Discord so you can supervise from your phone. Our Discord relay guide covers that side.
7. Watch the activity log for a few days. Every reply, greeting, and moderation action should be inspectable. Tune wording and cooldowns from what you see.

Best practices from running bots in production

These are the defaults we ship, and the reasoning behind them; they apply on any platform:

• Greet once, not every visit. Regulars hate being re-welcomed. Our greeter uses a cooldown so someone who pops in twice a day is greeted like a regular, not a stranger. Whatever platform you use, dedupe your greetings.
• Answer FAQs without the AI. Exact answers to known questions (where are the demos, how do redeliveries work) should be instant keyword matches, not generated text. They are faster, they are always correct, and they cost nothing.
• Pace the replies. A bot that answers in 200 milliseconds reads as a machine. A short natural pause reads as a person typing. Small thing, big difference in how visitors treat it.
• Rate-limit outreach hard. Our marketing IMs cap per day and will not message the same person twice within half a day, and region broadcasts dedupe over a full day. Aggressive messaging is how a store gets muted, then reported.
• Keep a human escape hatch. The bot should know when to say "let me get the owner" and ping you (a Discord relay makes this instant). AI answering billing disputes unsupervised is how trust dies.
• Disclose the bot. A line in the avatar's profile ("I am the store's automated host") costs nothing and buys goodwill.

Common mistakes

• Running automation on your main avatar. Policy risk plus social confusion. Dedicated, flagged account, always.
• Skipping the Scripted Agent flag. It exists precisely so honest bots stay in good standing.
• Letting the AI answer everything. Facts about your own store (prices, policies) belong in exact FAQ answers, with the AI handling the open-ended remainder.
• No logs, no supervision. If you cannot read back what your bot said yesterday, you will find out from an angry IM instead.
• Greeting like a fire alarm. Volume and repetition are the two ways bots make a venue worse. Cooldowns and caps are not optional.

The platform landscape in 2026

A fair snapshot of where to look, depending on your job:

• SmartBots: the established hosted-bot service, strongest around group management and admin tooling. Weekly per-bot pricing; see their site for current details.
• LifeBots: hosted bots aimed at roleplay communities, with AI chatbots and character automation.
• Self-hosted frameworks: for developers who want full control and accept the maintenance; start from the Second Life wiki's comparison pages.
• Thunder Viewer: our approach, a browser client with the AI host built in. The bot layer (personas, wake words, instant FAQ, greetings, marketing with hard rate limits, keyword and AI moderation with an incident log) rides on the same avatar and session you use to chat, and the AI is included, so you never bring your own API key. Combined with stay-online sessions, it is the shortest path from "I need a greeter" to a greeter that is actually greeting.

FAQ

Are bots allowed in Second Life?

Yes. Linden Lab permits automated accounts under the Scripted Agent policy: run the bot on its own dedicated avatar, flag that account as a Scripted Agent on secondlife.com, and follow the normal conduct rules.

What can Second Life bots actually do?

Everything an avatar can do, on a schedule or a trigger: greet arrivals, answer questions in IM and local chat, hold AI conversations in a persona, moderate chat, send group invites and notices, message visitors about releases, and staff roleplay scenes as NPCs.

Do Second Life bots cost money?

Self-hosting is free plus your time and server. Hosted services charge per bot, typically weekly. With Thunder Viewer the bot layer is part of the client and the AI is included, with usage limits that keep it fair; you never supply your own AI key.

Can Second Life bots use AI?

Yes, and it is the biggest change in years. Modern bots hold real conversations in a configurable persona, backed by large language models, with instant keyword answers for known questions. The craft is in the guardrails: pacing, cooldowns, moderation, and a human escape hatch.

How do I stop a bot from spamming people?

Choose a platform with rate limits and dedupe built in, then use them: greeting cooldowns, daily message caps, and no repeat messages to the same person within long windows. If a bot cannot do those things, it is not ready for a public venue.