How to host a Discord bot

Steps

1. Create the application and copy the token

   Open the Discord Developer Portal, press New Application and give it a name. On the Bot page copy the token. The token is your bot's password: if it leaks, click Regenerate to revoke it.

   If the bot reads the text of messages, also switch on the Message Content Intent on the same page, under Privileged Gateway Intents. Without it the bot gets empty values in the text fields of messages, with a few exceptions.

2. Invite the bot to your server

   In the Developer Portal open OAuth2, URL Generator, tick the bot scope and the permissions the bot needs, then open the link and pick a server. You need the Manage Server permission on that server.

3. Install discord.py

   discord.py needs Python 3.8 or higher. A virtual environment keeps its packages apart from the system's.

   $ sudo apt install -y python3-venv
   $ mkdir ~/bot && cd ~/bot
   $ python3 -m venv .venv
   $ .venv/bin/pip install -U discord.py

4. Put the token in .env

   Keep the token out of the code. The file is readable by you only, and git never sees it.

   $ echo 'DISCORD_TOKEN=<your token>' > .env
   $ chmod 600 .env
   $ echo '.env' >> .gitignore

5. Write the bot

   This bot answers $hello. It follows the quickstart in the discord.py documentation, with the token read from the environment. Save it as bot.py.

   # bot.py
   import os
   import discord
   
   intents = discord.Intents.default()
   intents.message_content = True
   
   client = discord.Client(intents=intents)
   
   @client.event
   async def on_ready():
       print(f"Logged in as {client.user}")
   
   @client.event
   async def on_message(message):
       if message.author == client.user:
           return
   
       if message.content.startswith("$hello"):
           await message.channel.send("Hello!")
   
   client.run(os.environ["DISCORD_TOKEN"])

6. Run it once by hand

   Load the token, start the script and write $hello in a channel the bot can see. It must answer. Stop it with Ctrl+C.

   $ set -a; source .env; set +a
   $ .venv/bin/python bot.py
   Logged in as CoffeeHelper#1234

7. Make it a systemd service

   Create the unit file, then enable it. Restart=always brings the bot back after a crash, and enable starts it on every boot. Replace dev with your user name.

   $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/discord-bot.service
   
   [Unit]
   Description=My Discord bot
   After=network-online.target
   Wants=network-online.target
   
   [Service]
   User=dev
   WorkingDirectory=/home/dev/bot
   EnvironmentFile=/home/dev/bot/.env
   ExecStart=/home/dev/bot/.venv/bin/python bot.py
   Restart=always
   RestartSec=5
   
   [Install]
   WantedBy=multi-user.target
   
   $ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
   $ sudo systemctl enable --now discord-bot

Why the host must not sleep

Discord talks to a bot over the Gateway, a WebSocket connection that the bot keeps open with heartbeats. If the line drops, the bot can Resume and get the events it missed, but only if it reconnects in time. Otherwise it starts a new session, and the events in between are not replayed.

This is where a sleeping host breaks the bot. The bot holds its connection and makes only outgoing requests, and an outgoing request does not wake a sleeping Uno computer. A bot on a sleeping computer stays offline until something else wakes it.

What keeps a Discord bot online on Uno

Uno computers sleep after 10 minutes with nothing to do and wake on the first request. Uno's own guide says where a bot like this belongs: anything that must hold connections, such as a bot on long polling, a game server or a queue consumer, belongs on a computer that does not go to sleep on its own. Two switches do it:

• In the console: on the computer's page in the console, Economy mode off: the computer stays on until you put it to sleep.
• Over the API: PATCH /api/v1/boxes/{id}/sleep-policy with {"always_on":true}: the computer never goes down on its own.

• Uno's guide does not say a running bot keeps the computer awake by itself. Do not count on it: set the computer not to sleep.

If the bot only has slash commands

Discord can send commands and button clicks to a web address instead of the open connection. Interactions come either through the Gateway or to this address, never both. Then no bot has to stay connected, and an HTTP request to one of your computer's apps wakes it.

• You must send the first response within 3 seconds. After a sleep the first command waits for the wake-up (median 118 ms in our measurement of 3 October 2026), so send a deferred reply first if your handler is slow.
• Discord signs each request with Ed25519. Verify the X-Signature-Ed25519 header, and answer the PING Discord sends when you save the address with a PONG.

The public https address is covered in the bot hosting guide. Protocol: interactions.

Check that it works

Check the status and watch the log while you write to the bot. Then leave it alone for longer than 10 minutes and write to it again. If it still answers, the host stays on.

$ sudo systemctl status discord-bot
Active: active (running)
$ journalctl -u discord-bot -f

Common problems