While they've been active pretty consistently (114 page loads within 24 hours when I checked NerrBot's logs earlier) they did actually respond to my messages. Could still be a bot, but I don't think it's my API if it is - my chat interface shouldn't result in that many frequent reconnects; either they're a human moving between pages or it's something along the lines of The Germ, accessing the site by manipulating the Windows interface itself.
I can't tell if it's a spambot or a lonely child
this is what i get for posting its source to google drive and making it public