A way to use Discord over a CLI using a bot account.
Having trouble installing/using even after reading the whole file below? Friend and then DM R2D2Vader#0693 (517742819830399000) on Discord for help.
Do you think this is against the Discord TOS? It's not. Read more here.
Node.js installed (get it from https://nodejs.org/)
Download the project as a .zip file from the menu above. Click "Clone or Download" at the right of the navbar just above the files, and then "Download Zip".
Extract the contents of the .zip file to your chosen location.
Note: You can acquire the files via Git if you want. This makes updating easy, as you can simply git pull the files. However, we will not discuss these methods in this guide.
Head over to https://discord.com/developers/applications/, sign in with your Discord account, and click "New Application" at the top right.
Give it a name and set the team to "Personal", then click "Create".
Head down to the "Bot" menu from the left hand navbar and click "Add bot". Click "Yes" when the confirmation pops up.
Give the bot a neat avatar if you wanna from the resulting page.
Look for the word "Token" right under the Username field. Click "Copy" below the token.
Head back to the place you extracted the files to earlier. Create a new text file, and name it .env (with no file extension). Then, open it in a text editor (Notepad works fine). Write TOKEN= on the first line and paste your bot token to the right of that.
For example, the whole file should read:
TOKEN=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
(Note that there should be no space between the equals sign and the token. Also note that the Xs do not represent the length or makeup of the actual bot token.)
Head back to Discord Developer Portal. Select the "OAuth2" tab from the left hand navbar. Scroll down to the box marked "Scopes" (one with a lot of check boxes) and check the check box within it that says "bot".
Scroll down further to the box marked "Bot Permissions" (another one with a lot of check boxes) and select the following boxes:
View Channels
Send Messages
Embed Links
Attach Files
Read Message History
Now look at the bottom of the "Scopes" box. You should see a Discord Bot Invite link. Copy it and send it to the owners of any server you want to chat on. They will have to add the bot by clicking on the link.
Time to head to your CLI.
Open your CLI and navigate to the folder which contains the files from the .zip file.
cd C:\Users\You\Example\Location (IDK how that works on Mac)
Install the packages by using the following command:
npm ci
Open your CLI and navigate to the tool's folder (the folder which you extracted the files to).
cd C:\Users\You\Example\Location (IDK how that works on Mac)
Run the following command to start the tool:
node index.js
You will be prompted to provide a channel. Please provide a Channel ID. Go to Discord, make sure Developer Mode is enabled, right-click on the channel you want to chat in, and select "Copy ID". Paste this into your CLI.
You can now send messages, as the bot user, into the selected channel!
All messages readable by the bot will appear in your CLI.
To change channel, enter ch or channel into the Send Message field and press enter. Then, as prompted, enter the new Channel ID.
To chat with a user via DM, you need to use the User's ID in place of a channel ID. Go to Discord, make sure Developer Mode is enabled, right-click on the user you want to DM, and select "Copy ID". Then follow the same process as for normal channels.
IMPORTANT: If you chat with a user in DMs, you wont be able to access them in later sessions/outside the session without the other user resending them.
To exit, type q, quit, or exit.
Do you want to hide the messages coming from a certain channel? Type mute into the Send Message field and press enter. Then, as prompted, enter the Channel ID for the channel you wish to mute. You can unmute the channel by following the same process.
To mention users, you'll need their ID. Go to Discord, make sure Developer Mode is enabled, right-click on the user you want to mention, and select "Copy ID". Then, type the snippet below, replacing UserID with the user's ID:
<@UserID>
For example: <@496947965135683606>
If you give the bot role mentioning perms (via Roles in Discord, Google how to do that), you can mention roles, using their IDs, like so:
<@&RoleID>
For example: <@&669204767716933649>
Discord's TOS prohibits both self-bots and alternative clients. Both of these involve a program pretending to be a user. This tool is the opposite, because it involves a user pretending to be a bot. There are no restrictions imposed by Discord that prevent a user from chatting via a bot account. Discord knows that you're coding bots to perform whatever task you want to (within reason), so there's no reason why you can't utilise a bot to send messages you type in rather than pre-coded messages.