Sometimes you just want to ask the universe big yes-or-no questions like, “Am I a good person?” or, “Should I get a burrito for lunch?” The Magic 8-Ball is here to help with that.

M-x eight-ball will prompt you to ask a question, and it will respond with a random answer. Passing the universal argument to eight-ball (typically done by invoking it with C-u M-x eight-ball) will copy a timestamp, the question, and response to the kill-ring.

See Customization section for whether to print the question along with response in the minibuffer, whether or not to include the timestamp, what format the timestamp should take, and the responses with which the Magic 8-Ball can reply.

straight.el is a powerful Emacs package manager that makes it easy to install Emacs packages from the usual sources like GNU ELPA and MELPA as well as arbitrary git repos (such as this one). It works as an alternative to package.el, and the transition is relatively painless. In order to install and use this package using straight.el, simply include the following in your init:

(straight-use-package
 '(eight-ball
   :type git
   :host github
   :repo "RyanMatlock/eight-ball"))
(require 'eight-ball)

Clone this repo to /path/to/eight-ball [note: /path/to/ should probably be something like ~/.emacs.d/ ], add the following to your init file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/eight-ball")
(require 'eight-ball)

Evaluate that code, and you’re ready to go without having to restart Emacs.

eight-ball.el provides the customization group 8ball, which is available through the customize interface under Applications/Games/8ball.