Discord

Triggers turn an agent into a long-lived service that waits for events, acts on them, delivers the result, and goes idle. The discord trigger connects that loop to a Discord server: the agent watches channels and replies in-channel to the messages that wake it.

triggers:
  - type: discord
    channels: ["issues"]        # names or ids; omit for all channels
    # require_mention: true     # only respond when @-mentioned
    # token_env: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN (default)
    # from_users: ["amin", "ratul"]  # only handle these authors (user ids or usernames)
    # reply_channel: "1522..."  # post replies here instead of the source channel
    # allow_silence: true       # a reply of exactly __NO_REPLY__ posts nothing

configs:
  agent-yaml:
    content: |
      handle: issue-bot
      description: Turns team Discord messages into GitHub issues.
      model:
        provider: openai-compatible
        id: gpt-5.4-mini
      purpose: |
        You turn Discord messages in the issues channel into well-formed
        GitHub issues and reply with the issue link.
      triggers:
        - type: discord
          channels: ["issues"]   # names or ids; omit for all channels
      memory:
        scope: thread

services:
  issue-bot:
    image: ghcr.io/loopedautomation/agent:latest
    configs:
      - source: agent-yaml
        target: /agent/agent.yaml
    env_file: .env   # DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and the model's API key
    volumes:
      - issue-bot-data:/data
    restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
  issue-bot-data:

Setup

Setting up a Discord bot takes about 15 minutes:

1. In the Discord Developer Portal, create a New Application with a Bot.
2. Enable the Message Content Intent under Privileged Gateway Intents. Without it, messages arrive empty — this is the most common setup failure.
3. Copy the bot token and export it: export DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=...
4. Run af discord-invite agent.yaml to print a ready-made invite URL with the correct scopes and permissions, then open it and invite the bot to your server.
5. Run the agent: af run agent.yaml

The agent replies in-channel to the triggering message; conversations are keyed per channel or thread, and memory.scope: thread continues them (Memory). It ignores bots, itself, and empty messages; long replies split at Discord's 2000-char limit.

Observer agents

Three optional keys together turn the trigger from a chatbot into an observer — an agent that watches channels, reacts to specific people, and reports elsewhere (a review bot, a moderation assistant, a coach):

• from_users — handle only these authors. The filter runs before the model is called: everyone else's messages are dropped in the trigger and never reach the provider.
• reply_channel — deliver replies to a dedicated channel instead of the source. Out-of-channel replies quote the triggering message and link back to it.
• allow_silence — let the agent say nothing. Instruct it in purpose to answer with exactly __NO_REPLY__ when it has no feedback; the trigger then posts nothing instead of a "looks fine" reply on every message.

Every run — replied or silent — lands in the agent's run history with its status, steps and tokens.