A **designation** is a string that (somewhat) uniquely identifies bots, much like a name does for humans. A designation can also be called a **serial number** (in name only, for it is neither).

Some formats for designations:

  * [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUID|UUID]]: e.g. 74ba69db-93c9-465a-8cee-6021f35570bf. Perhaps abbreviated to 74ba or 70bf in casual use.
  * symbol-dash-number: e.g. [[44203|Δ-44203]]. This format is usually abbreviated to the number, the symbol tends to be dropped in casual use.
  * a (hexadecimal) number: e.g. 465A or 0x62656570. As the second example shows, this could be a string represented with Unicode codepoints in hexadecimal.
  * a systematic identifier system, like [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_identifier|OID]] or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIC_identification_marking_for_tractive_stock|UIC locomotive numbers]].

One can come up with a designation by oneself. But it is also fun to ask others to come up with a nice number. (Please try to avoid collisions though!)