Discord Bot Setup

Hosted platform (one-click setup)

On the AnswerLoops cloud platform, no Discord Developer Portal is required.

1. Go to Settings → Discord
2. Click Add AnswerLoops to Discord
3. Pick your server in Discord's authorization screen
4. Return to Settings — tick the channels you want monitored
5. Save

The platform bot is already running. Channel picks are saved instantly and hot-reloaded — no restart needed.

Self-hosted setup

1. Create a Discord Application

1. Go to discord.com/developers/applications
2. Click New Application → name it (e.g. "AnswerLoops")
3. Go to Bot tab → Add Bot
4. Under Token → Reset Token → copy it

DISCORD_TOKEN=your_bot_token
DISCORD_APPLICATION_ID=your_application_id  # from General Information tab

2. Set bot permissions

Under Bot tab, enable these Privileged Gateway Intents:

• Message Content Intent
• Server Members Intent (optional, for role pings)

3. Invite the bot to your server

Go to OAuth2 → URL Generator:

• Scopes: bot, applications.commands
• Bot permissions: Send Messages, Read Message History, View Channels, Use Slash Commands

Copy the generated URL and open it in your browser to invite the bot.

4. Get channel IDs

Enable Developer Mode: Discord → User Settings → Advanced → Developer Mode ✓

Right-click a channel → Copy Channel ID

5. Configure in AnswerLoops Settings

Go to Settings → Discord and enter:

• Bot Token — same as DISCORD_TOKEN
• Channel IDs — channels to listen on (comma-separated)
• Escalation Role ID (optional) — role to @mention when AI confidence is low
• Confidence threshold — 0–1, default 0.8

Platform OAuth env vars (self-hosted multi-tenant)

To enable the one-click OAuth flow on your own deployment, add these env vars:

DISCORD_CLIENT_ID=your_application_client_id
DISCORD_CLIENT_SECRET=your_application_client_secret  # OAuth2 → Client Secret
DISCORD_TOKEN=your_platform_bot_token  # single bot shared across all orgs

The callback URL to register in Discord OAuth2 is:

https://your-domain.com/api/discord/callback

Config hot-reload

The bot uses Postgres LISTEN/NOTIFY to pick up config changes instantly — no restart needed.

When you save changes in Settings → Discord (channel IDs, bot token, confidence threshold), the database fires a pg_notify('config_changed') event. The bot's dedicated listener connection receives it and reloads config within milliseconds.

The bot also updates its channel→guild map automatically whenever it joins or leaves a server (GuildCreate / GuildDelete events) — no manual ID entry required.

Slash commands

Once connected, AnswerLoops registers these slash commands:

• /ask [question] — search the knowledge base and return the best match
• /summarize — summarize the current thread as bullet points