Yes! I recommend using the Howdy AI Botkit which makes it very easy to create a Slack bot. Here's a simple 'hello world' bot:
var Botkit = require('botkit')
var controller = Botkit.slackbot()
controller.spawn({
token: <my_slack_bot_token>,
}).startRTM()
controller.hears(
'hello', ['direct_message', 'direct_mention', 'mention'],
function (bot, message) {
bot.reply(message, 'Hello world!')
}
)
As soon as you run the following with node, you can send 'hello' as a DM to the bot and it'll reply with 'Hello world!'.
If you want to deploy the bot, I recommend using now or Heroku. It's free, very easy to setup and it'll make your bot always available!