Discord

Run your ZeroClaw agent as a Discord bot. This guide walks you through it click by click, no prior bot experience needed. By the end you'll have a bot sitting in your server that replies when people talk to it.

Who can talk to the agent

{{#peer-group discord}}

Quickstart

Five steps: make the bot, copy its token, turn on two switches, invite it, and start ZeroClaw.

1. Create the bot

1. Go to the Discord Developer Portal.
2. Click New Application, give it a name, and Create.
3. In the left sidebar, click Bot.
4. Click Reset Token, then Copy. This long string is your bot_token. Keep it somewhere safe for step 3, you cannot see it again later (only reset it).

The bot token is a password for your bot. Anyone who has it can control your bot. Never paste it into a public chat, screenshot, or commit it to git.

2. Turn on the two switches the bot needs

Still on the Bot page, scroll to Privileged Gateway Intents and toggle both of these on:

• Message Content Intent so the bot can read what people type.
• Server Members Intent so it can see who is in the server.

Click Save Changes. If you skip this, the bot connects but never sees any messages, which is the single most common "my bot does nothing" cause.

3. Tell ZeroClaw about the bot

Put the token from step 1 into your config. The token is a secret, so set it through a surface that encrypts it rather than typing it into config.toml:

{{#config-where channels discord}}

{{#secret-config channels.discord.<alias>.bot_token}}

4. Invite the bot to your server

1. Back in the Developer Portal, open OAuth2 -> URL Generator.
2. Under Scopes, check bot.
3. Under Bot Permissions, check at least Send Messages, Read Message History, and View Channels.
4. Copy the URL at the bottom, open it in your browser, pick your server, and Authorize.

The bot now shows up in your member list (offline until you start ZeroClaw).

5. Start and test

Start ZeroClaw (zeroclaw service restart or zeroclaw daemon), then send a message in a channel the bot can see. It should reply. If it doesn't, jump to Troubleshooting.

Configuration

The full field list, derived from the live schema. Most have sensible defaults; for a basic bot you only ever set bot_token.

{{#config-fields channels.discord}}

Narrowing where the bot listens

By default the bot listens in every server it's invited to and every channel it can see. To scope it down:

• guild_ids: limit the bot to specific servers (guilds). Empty means all.
• channel_ids: limit it to specific channels. Empty means all visible.

To find an ID, enable Developer Mode in Discord (User Settings -> Advanced), then right-click a server or channel and Copy ID.

Threads and context

{{#thread-context channel="Discord"}}

Archive and search

Set archive = true and the channel opens a sidecar discord.db memory store, records every message it sees, and registers a discord_search tool the agent can use to look up past conversation. Leave it off if you don't need history search; the bot still replies normally either way.

Streaming

{{#streaming channel="Discord" mode="stream_mode" path="channels.discord.<alias>.stream_mode"}}

Replies that feel natural

• mention_only: when true, the bot only answers messages that @-mention it, so it stays quiet in busy channels.
• reply_min_interval_secs: a minimum gap between replies to the same person, useful if instant responses feel robotic.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Bot is online but never replies	Message Content Intent is off	Turn it on in the Developer Portal (step 2) and restart
Bot replies nowhere	Not invited, or missing View Channels / Send Messages	Re-run the invite (step 4) with the right permissions
Bot ignores most messages	mention_only = true	@-mention the bot, or set it to false
"Invalid token" at startup	Token mistyped or reset	Reset the token in the portal, set it again (step 3)

See also

• Who can talk to the agent (peer groups)
• Slack
• Channels overview