The bot already has this http://wiki.shoutirc.com/index.php/Configuration:TTS

Ubuntu 17.10 is end of life, you'd need to update to 18.04. Remember if you are running a server you'll generally want to run LTS versions versus the regular ones.

That plugin isn't related to AutoDJ, it doesn't actually schedule anything it's just informational.

Specialized functions like that would be on your end and pretty easy to script as I outlined earlier.

!reload only reloads your ircbot.text, !autodj-reload re-scans your music folder.

This isn't built-in to the bot but it would be very easy to script. When you want it to play just:

Move file into the library folder
ibctl to relay the file, next (if needed), then reload to rescan the library folder.

Yes, the bot works with sc_serv and sc_trans already. If you mean control sc_trans it doesn't do that since it has it's own built-in AutoDJ.

It doesn't look like that is an open protocol, everything is through their servers.

You shouldn't have people with permission to use the command who you can't trust not to mess around, the +a flag required for it is for trusted DJs not the general public.

Currently if you do a playlist it will only play one item on the playlist, not the whole playlist or anything like that.

Just an update to this, the bot no longer requires an IRC connection so using it as a transcoder is even easier and more convenient than before. Although it is probably still overkill compared to using liquidsoap, especially if you want more than one relay going.

It will be if there is ever a new major update of the bot (v6), until then it's there for compatibility for people who were already using it before the Forum plugin came out.