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Test your Root Bot

Root supports testing your Bot locally. Your Bot still needs a valid DEV_TOKEN because execution isn't fully local. Calls to the Community API (e.g., programmatically creating a new message in a community channel) will go through Root's servers and then to the Root native client.

Bot execution

Your Bot will run inside the Root DevHost. The DevHost is a Node execution environment that's part of the Root SDK.

Usage

To launch your Bot inside DevHost, do the following:

Open a terminal in your Bot's project folder.
Run the following command:
```
npm run bot
```
The bot script is defined in the package.json file; it's shorthand for this:
```
rootsdk start devhost
```
The devhost reads your launch entry-point from the root-manifest.json file in your project folder. Your entry-point file is the file containing the call to start:
```
await rootServer.lifecycle.start();
```

Root native client

To see your Bot interacting with the community, you can launch the Root native client and navigate to the community represented in your DEV_TOKEN. The starter-code Bot responds to the /echo command and replies with the text you include after the command.