The Lion, the Ecologist and the Plankton: A Classification of Species in Multi-bot Ecosystems

The vast majority of state-of-the-art and practice have, so far, focused on understanding and developing individual bots that support software development (DevBots), while the interactions and collaborations between those DevBots introduce intriguing challenges and synergies that can both disrupt and enhance development cycles. In this vision paper we propose a taxonomy for DevBot roles in an ecosystem, based on how they interact. Much like biology, DevBots ecosystems rely on a balance between the creation, usage and maintenance of DevBots, particularly, on how they depend on one another. Further we contribute with reflections on how these interactions affect multi-bot projects.