Creating a Discord Bot with Replit Agent and discord.js

Learn how to create your first Discord bot with Replit Agent, an advanced AI-coding agent, and discord.js, a Node.js-based Discord API library. This step-by-step guide teaches you how to go from an initial idea to a 24/7 Discord bot in minutes, regardless of skill level.

As the go-to platform for fostering online communities, Discord connects people from all walks of life - from gaming enthusiasts sharing strategies to software engineers collaborating on projects. While Discord is renowned for its robust communication features (e.g., text and voice channels, video calls, and screen sharing), businesses leverage custom Discord bots to automate repetitive customer service tasks, post notifications from third-party services like Asana and GitHub, and broadcast new product feature and update announcements on schedule. To deploy a Discord bot, developers typically need to write code, connect the Discord bot to a target Discord server, and find reliable hosting to keep the Discord bot running 24/7.  Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a single platform for building and hosting the Discord bot for free? That’s where Replit Agent comes in.

This comprehensive guide will demonstrate how you can create a Discord bot from scratch with Replit Agent and discord.js. Specifically, you will be building a Discord bot that monitors channel messages for any issue reports and automatically creates corresponding GitHub issues for them. This Discord bot is particularly useful for open source projects where community members report bugs or suggest features in Discord channels.

How do you prompt Replit Agent to create a Discord bot?

I. Give a concise, one-sentence description of the Discord bot.

In the prompt that’s provided to Replit Agent, the first sentence should explicitly state that you want to create a Discord bot. Additionally, it should describe the Discord bot’s purpose and core functionality.

For example, for a Discord bot that creates GitHub issues from channel messages:

Create a Discord bot that monitors channel messages, identifies issue reports based on triggers or formatting, and automatically creates corresponding GitHub issues with relevant details extracted from the message content.


If you have trouble coming up with a concise, one-sentence description, then you can prompt Claude AI or ChatGPT with the following:

Give a concise description for the following task:

"<DESCRIPTION>"

 with the task you want to describe concisely, and copy and paste the description into Replit Agent’s chat interface.

II. Provide a list of features the Discord bot should support.

After adding a one-sentence description of the Discord bot to the prompt, add a detailed list of any features that the Discord bot should support. The more items that describe how the Discord bot should behave, the more likely that Replit Agent will generate exactly what you’re looking for. Being specific about functionality, user interactions, and expected behaviors helps Replit Agent understand your vision and translate it into functional code.

Create a Discord bot that monitors channel messages, identifies issue reports based on triggers or formatting, and automatically creates corresponding GitHub issues with relevant details extracted from the message content.

The Discord bot should support the following functionality:

1. When the Discord bot identifies a message that might be highlighting an issue that the user is facing, the Discord bot will ask the user if they would like to create a new "ticket" (in this case, a GitHub issue).

2. Once the user creates a new "ticket," the Discord bot will create a GitHub issue with a concise, yet descriptive, title that describes the issue. In the body of the GitHub issue will several bullet points that outline the issue, as well as a code block with the contents of the original message. At the very end of the body of the GitHub issue will be a link to the original message in Discord.

3. Once the GitHub issue has been created, the Discord bot will create a new thread from the original message. The Discord bot will create a new confirmation message in the thread that contains a link to the GitHub issue.

III. Specify technologies (e.g., languages, libraries, frameworks, tools, and APIs) to use and design principles to follow.

After adding a detailed list of features that the Discord bot should support to the prompt, enrich the prompt by mentioning any specific technologies that should be used and the design principles to follow. This ensures that Replit Agent understands not just what to build, but how to build it according to your technical and design preferences. 

For example, for a Discord bot that creates GitHub issues from channel messages: 

Create a Discord bot that monitors channel messages, identifies issue reports based on triggers or formatting, and automatically creates corresponding GitHub issues with relevant details extracted from the message content.

The Discord bot should support the following functionality:

1. When the Discord bot identifies a message that might be highlighting an issue that the user is facing, the Discord bot will ask the user if they would like to create a new "ticket" (in this case, a GitHub issue). Each message will be evaluated by the OpenAI API.

2. Once the user creates a new "ticket," the Discord bot will create a GitHub issue with a concise, yet descriptive, title that describes the issue. In the body of the GitHub issue will several bullet points that outline the issue, as well as a code block with the contents of the original message. At the very end of the body of the GitHub issue will be a link to the original message in Discord. The Discord bot will create the GitHub issue via the GitHub GraphQL API. The title and bullet points will be generated by the OpenAI API based on the contents of the original message

3. Once the GitHub issue has been created, the Discord bot will create a new thread from the original message. The Discord bot will create a new message in the thread that contains a link to the GitHub issue.

Implement the Discord bot with Node.js, TypeScript, and the Node.js library discord.js.

IV. Enter the final prompt into Replit Agent and build the initial prototype of the Discord bot.

Once the prompt has been finalized, enter the prompt into Replit Agent. It will analyze your prompt and propose additional features that you might want to add to the Discord bot. If you think any these features should be supported by the Discord bot, then feel free to check the relevant features. Once the requirements have been clarified, click the “Approve plan & start” button, and Replit Agent will start building the initial prototype of the Discord bot.  

Since the Discord bot integrates with several third-party services (e.g., Discord, GitHub, and OpenAI), you will need to provide the following environment variables to ensure that the Discord bot can access these services:

To obtain a Discord bot token, log in to your Discord account and navigate to the 

 of your Discord account’s developer dashboard.

In the top-right corner of the applications view, click on the “New Application” button.

Name the application “Issue Tracker” and click the “Create” button. In the Discord developer dashboard, an “application” represents a project that can interact with Discord’s platform and APIs.

In the sidebar, click on “Bot.” Under the “Authorization Flow” section, double-check that “Public Bot” is toggled on. This ensures that the Discord bot can be added to your server in a later step.

Under “Privileged Gateway Intents” section, toggle on “Message Content Intent.” This ensures that the Discord bot can receive message content in most messages.

Then, based on the Discord bot’s functionality, check the following permissions for the Discord bot:

Scroll back up and click the “Reset Token” button to reveal the token.

Copy the newly generated token, and paste it as the value of the Discord bot’s 

How do you obtain a GitHub personal access token?

To obtain a GitHub personal access token, log in to your GitHub account and navigate to the 

 of your GitHub account dashboard. Unlike classic tokens, fine-grained tokens offer more granular permissions control.

Click on the “Generate new token” button.

Give the token a descriptive name that mentions where it’s being used. Set the expiration date to 90 days from the current date. You can choose to have the token never expire, but this is considered a bad security practice since there’s always a very small possibility that your API key gets compromised. So make sure you always rotate your API keys every several months! Lastly, for repository access, select the GitHub repository where you want to host issues reported from your Discord server (in this case, you can create a new repository that’s named “discord-community” and select it for this token).

Under the “Permissions” section, expand the “Repository Permissions” accordion component. Only grant read and write permissions for “Issues.” Leave all other resources with no access permissions. The token will only be able to read and write to the repository’s issues.

Click on the “Generate token” button to create the personal access token.

Copy the newly generated personal access token, and paste it as the value of the Discord bot’s 

 environment variable in Replit Agent. Additionally, fill out the Discord bot’s 

 environment variable with your GitHub account’s username, and fill out the Discord bot’s 

 environment variable with the name of the repository that was selected for the personal access token (in this case, “discord-community”).

To obtain an OpenAI API key, log in to your OpenAI account and navigate to the 

In the top-right corner of the API keys view, click the “+ Create new secret key” button.

Within the modal, enter in a descriptive name for the API key so that you know where it’s being used. Additionally, this name helps you easily identify the API key in your OpenAI account dashboard. Keep the default values for the remaining fields. With all of the requisite information filled out, click on the “Create secret key” button.

Copy the newly generated API key’s secret key value, and paste it as the value of the Discord bot’s 

How do you check if the Discord bot that’s built by Replit Agent is up and running?

Once Replit Agent has built the initial prototype of the Discord bot, you can preview and access it from a 

 URL. Open a new Webview tab, and click on the address button to see the replit.dev URL.

If you check out the source code of the Discord bot, then you will find that it’s running alongside a Express.js RESTful API with two endpoints:

To verify that the Discord bot is up and running, open a new tab in the browser, and enter into the address bar 

How do you add a Discord bot to a Discord server?

To add a Discord bot to a Discord server, you will need to generate an OAuth2 URL, which is a URL that authorizes an application to access a Discord account. Back in your Discord account’s developer dashboard, under the sidebar of the application, click on “Oauth2.” 

Under the “OAuth2 URL Generator” section, only check “bot” for scopes.

Under the “Bot Permissions” sub-section, check the same permissions that were previously checked for the Discord bot:

Lastly, for integration type, select “Guild Install” from the select dropdown. This will install the application at the server (”guild”) level rather than at the user level, which is necessary for monitoring messages across all channels.

Copy and paste the generated OAuth2 URL into the address bar of a new browser tab. 

Upon visiting this URL, you will be asked to grant the “Issue Tracker” application access to your Discord account and to be added to a Discord server of your choosing. The application will add a Discord bot to this server. 

Once you have chosen the Discord server you want to add the Discord bot to, click the “Continue” button.

Here, you can review all of the permissions the Discord bot will have in your Discord server. Since these permission were carefully picked in previous steps, you can leave them all checked. Click the “Authorize” button.

Great! Now the “Issue Tracker” application has access to your Discord server. 

In the #general channel of your Discord server, you will notice a greeting message for the Discord bot, indicating that it has successfully been added to the Discord server. 

How do you debug issues in the Discord bot with Replit Agent?

Let’s verify that the Discord bot works properly. In any Discord channel on your Discord server, type the following message:

Hello! I've been using your platform for six months and love the analytics features, but I frequently experience lag when exporting very large reports (1+ million events) to CSV format. How can I export these reports without any lag?  

Upon entering this message, you will notice that the Discord bot correctly identifies the message as highlighting a potential issue, and the Discord bot asks you if you would like to create a GitHub issue for the issue. To confirm, react with a thumbs up (click on the button with the thumbs up icon at the bottom of the Discord bot’s message).  

After reacting with a thumbs up, unfortunately, you will receive a message from the Discord bot that says that the Discord bot was not able to create the GitHub issue.

Jumping back into Replit Agent, open a “Console” tab. The “Console” tab shows two error logs from the Discord bot concerning the creation of a GitHub issue. Let’s tell Replit Agent to fix these bugs.

Send the following message to Replit Agent:

The Discord bot successfully identified an issue, and in Discord, I reacted with an upvote to tell the Discord bot to create a GitHub issue for the identified issue. However, the Discord bot responded with the message "Sorry, there was an error creating the GitHub issue. Please try again later." In the console, it shows the following error messages:

```
error: GitHub issue creation failed: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'issue') {"stack":"TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading 'issue')\n    at createGitHubIssue (/home/runner/workspace/server/bot/github.ts:62:41)\n    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)\n    at async ReactionCollector.<anonymous> (/home/runner/workspace/server/bot/discord.ts:42:34)","timestamp":"2025-03-11T03:09:35.681Z"}
error: Error creating issue: Failed to create GitHub issue {"stack":"Error: Failed to create GitHub issue\n    at createGitHubIssue (/home/runner/workspace/server/bot/github.ts:65:11)\n    at process.processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:95:5)\n    at async ReactionCollector.<anonymous> (/home/runner/workspace/server/bot/discord.ts:42:34)","timestamp":"2025-03-11T03:09:35.683Z"}
```

Please fix these issues.

Replit Agent will identify the cause of the bug and make the necessary corrections to fix it.

Once the changes have been made, jump back to your Discord server and enter the same message to trigger the Discord bot. Upon reacting with a thumbs up, the Discord bot now creates a new thread that links to the created GitHub issue.

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