How can I access the Google+ hangout chat?

I want to implement a speaker queue manager that works off of the chat - see GitHub repo Q Bot for more details - but are unable to find a way to listen to chat events (and then react to them). Any hints?

How do I access Hangouts chat?

To get started, open your Gmail account, and in the left panel, you will see the 'Hangouts' section. There you will see your name and a button to add contacts for starting a conversation with someone.

There's no way to access chat from the Hangouts API.

There is, however, an open feature request for this. If you star the issue you'll be notified when it's updated.

You might be able to work around this by making your own interface in a Hangout extension to control the inputs for this app, rather than overloading the chat feature.