Discord

Each agent can be wired to a dedicated Discord bot application. When bound, the agent receives DMs and channel mentions as jobs and replies in the same channel.

The binding is per-agent and per-bot: one Discord application, one agent. You can have multiple agents each with their own bot.

Prerequisites

• A Discord server you own or can invite bots to. Bots can only be messaged (even in DM) by people who share a server with them. If you don't have one, create one for free in the Discord app first.

Create the bot

1. Open discord.com/developers/applications → New Application (top right) → give it a name (this becomes the bot's name) → accept the terms → Create.
2. Left sidebar → Bot. Scroll to Privileged Gateway Intents and switch ON Server Members Intent AND Message Content Intent, then click Save Changes at the bottom. The toggles do not save themselves. Without Message Content Intent the bot's messages arrive with empty content.
3. Still on the Bot page: click Reset Token (Discord may ask for your password or 2FA code) and copy the token. It is shown only once. Lose it and you must reset again.
4. Left sidebar → OAuth2 → OAuth2 URL Generator. Under Scopes, tick bot and applications.commands. A Bot Permissions grid appears below. Tick View Channels, Send Messages, Read Message History, Attach Files, Embed Links.
5. Copy the Generated URL at the bottom, open it in a new tab, pick your server, and Authorize. The bot appears in your server's member list. (Offline is normal. It wakes up once connected below.)

Connect it in Nodal

1. Open the agent's edit page → Channels tab → Discord card.
2. Paste the bot token into the Bot token field → Connect.
3. The runner logs the bot in within a few seconds. No restart needed.

How incoming messages become jobs

In DMs, every message from an authorized conversation triggers a job. See Who can talk to your bot below: the first DM requests ownership, which you then approve in the dashboard.

In a server channel, the bot only responds when clearly addressed:

• /ask <agent-slug> <text>: routes to a different agent in the same workspace
• /agents or /start: reserved commands
• A mention of the bot, either @BotName or its managed role. Discord's autocomplete usually inserts a role mention instead of a user mention when a human types @BotName; both are handled the same way.
• A reply to a previous message from the bot

Any other channel message is silently ignored. The bot always ignores messages from any bot author, including itself (a hard anti-loop rule).

Image attachments up to 10 MB are downloaded and attached to the job so the agent can see them; larger ones are skipped.

Who can talk to your bot

A Discord bot's invite link is easy to pass around, so each bot has an allowlist:

• You claim it by DMing it, then confirming in the dashboard. The first private message to a freshly connected bot records an owner claim — it grants nothing yet and runs no job. Approve that conversation under Agents → your agent → Channels and it becomes the bot's owner. From then on your messages go straight through. Whoever DMs first can only ever obtain a request you are free to refuse.
• A new person is held for your approval. If someone the bot doesn't know messages or mentions it, no job runs. Instead you (the owner) get a button card in your own DM ("👤 Name wants to talk to this bot. Allow?") with Allow/Deny buttons. The requester is told their request is pending.

A server channel can never bootstrap ownership. If nobody has DMed the bot yet, a mention in a channel is silently ignored. Not even a pending request is created. You must DM the bot first.

Verify it works

1. Right-click the bot in the member list → Message, and send anything. Expect a reply within a few seconds, and the run listed under Logs → Activity.
2. Mention the bot in a server channel. Expect an approval card in the owner's DM, and a reply in the channel once you click Allow.

Related

• Concepts: Agents
• Concepts: Connectors & MCP
• Telegram: the same ownership/approval model, on a different channel