So you want to write a twitter bot. Use my gem. Then, you can just do this: load 'twitter_auth.rb' require 'tweetbot' bot = TweetBot.configure do |config| config.response_frequency = 100 config.respond_to_phrase "tweetbot example phrase" do |responses| responses << "I am tweetbot!" << "You rang?" << "Pretty cool, thanks for saying hello" end config.respond_to_phrase "hey @tweetbot" do |responses| responses << "Hey back at ya" << "You rang again?" end config.twitter_auth = TwitterAuth::AuthKeys end bot.talk and build a file called twitter_auth.rb that has your keys module TwitterAuth MyName = 'twitter_name' ApigeeEnpoint = nil def self.use_apigee? !ApigeeEnpoint.nil? end AuthKeys = { consumer_key: "key", consumer_secret: "secret", oauth_token: "token", oauth_token_secret: "token_secret" } end Abstracting out the apigee stuff, don't worry. Just leave it like that for now.