Auto Message

The Auto Message is a short note shown to every user at logon — a single shared message that any user can update. As soon as the next person changes it, yours is gone. It's the BBS equivalent of a whiteboard: casual, public, and ephemeral.

In the Classic shell, press A from the Main prompt.

A live capture from vertrauen:

Auto Message Read, Write, or Quit:

• R — Read the current auto-message
• W — Write a new auto-message (see below)
• Q — Quit back to the Main prompt

Sysops also see a D — Delete option to remove the auto-message entirely.

Selecting W gives you up to 3 lines of text to compose, each up to 76 characters (or shorter if the sysop has a meme/border feature enabled). After typing your lines, you're asked to confirm before the message is posted.

The posted message records your username and the timestamp. Once confirmed, the previous auto-message is replaced for all users immediately.

Only one auto-message exists at a time — there is no history visible to users.

• User Documentation
• Classic shell — A from Main prompt
• automsg module — sysop configuration reference