Incorrect 50001s returned when sending DMs from a user-installed application

[LJNeon]

Description

Attempts to send a message to a specific user's DMs will result in a 50001 Missing Access even when retried. Restarting the bot resolves the issue, the exact same message will correctly send to the exact same user. This happens to seemingly random users, but does happen consistently. It's rather annoying that I need to restart my bot constantly to allow it to function correctly.

Steps to Reproduce

I can consistently reproduce this with my bot, and am more than happy to supply any necessary information for this. My application ID is 1010660593847521352 and the bot connects via the gateway with no intents.

Expected Behavior

No 50001s are returned since access to the user's DMs is not missing.

Current Behavior

Some seemingly random users will be unable to receive DMs from the bot due to 50001 errors. Restarting the bot allows those users to receive DMs again despite no other changes being made.

Screenshots/Videos

A snippet of the error logs

{"level":50,"time":1751311692879,"err":{"type":"DiscordAPIError","message":"Missing Access","requestBody":{"files":[],"json":{"tts":false,"enforce_nonce":false,"embeds":[{"title":"Time to vote!","description":"It's been at least 12 hours since you voted for me on [**top.gg**](https://top.gg/bot/1010660593847521352/vote)! You can now vote for me again to show further support!\n","footer":{"text":"You're currently #1 on the /voters leaderboard!"},"color":5759487}],"allowed_mentions":{"parse":[],"replied_user":false}}},"rawError":{"type":"Object","message":"Missing Access","code":50001},"code":50001,"status":403,"method":"POST","url":"https://discord.com/api/v10/channels/1346501313315344564/messages"},"msg":"Missing Access"}
{"level":50,"time":1751311702965,"err":{"type":"DiscordAPIError","message":"Missing Access","requestBody":{"files":[],"json":{"tts":false,"enforce_nonce":false,"embeds":[{"title":"Time to vote!","description":"It's been at least 12 hours since you voted for me on [**top.gg**](https://top.gg/bot/1010660593847521352/vote)! You can now vote for me again to show further support!\n","footer":{"text":"You're currently #1 on the /voters leaderboard!"},"color":5759487}],"allowed_mentions":{"parse":[],"replied_user":false}}},"rawError":{"type":"Object","message":"Missing Access","code":50001},"code":50001,"status":403,"method":"POST","url":"https://discord.com/api/v10/channels/1346501313315344564/messages"},"msg":"Missing Access"}
{"level":50,"time":1751311713042,"err":{"type":"DiscordAPIError","message":"Missing Access","requestBody":{"files":[],"json":{"tts":false,"enforce_nonce":false,"embeds":[{"title":"Time to vote!","description":"It's been at least 12 hours since you voted for me on [**top.gg**](https://top.gg/bot/1010660593847521352/vote)! You can now vote for me again to show further support!\n","footer":{"text":"You're currently #1 on the /voters leaderboard!"},"color":5759487}],"allowed_mentions":{"parse":[],"replied_user":false}}},"rawError":{"type":"Object","message":"Missing Access","code":50001},"code":50001,"status":403,"method":"POST","url":"https://discord.com/api/v10/channels/1346501313315344564/messages"},"msg":"Missing Access"}
{"level":50,"time":1751311723212,"err":{"type":"DiscordAPIError","message":"Missing Access","requestBody":{"files":[],"json":{"tts":false,"enforce_nonce":false,"embeds":[{"title":"Time to vote!","description":"It's been at least 12 hours since you voted for me on [**top.gg**](https://top.gg/bot/1010660593847521352/vote)! You can now vote for me again to show further support!\n","footer":{"text":"You're currently #1 on the /voters leaderboard!"},"color":5759487}],"allowed_mentions":{"parse":[],"replied_user":false}}},"rawError":{"type":"Object","message":"Missing Access","code":50001},"code":50001,"status":403,"method":"POST","url":"https://discord.com/api/v10/channels/1346501313315344564/messages"},"msg":"Missing Access"}

A screenshot of the exact message (ID: 1389468049295544420) being sent immediately after the bot is restarted:

This is in my DMs, so I can 100% confirm that I had the bot added as a user app AND shared a mutual server with DMs enabled (not that the later should be needed).

Client and System Information

Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
node.js v24.0.1
discord.js 14.21.0

[LJNeon]

For now I have my bot restart itself whenever a 50001 is received so it can function as intended, but that is VERY much so not ideal and I would want a proper fix ASAP.

[Darker-Ink]

This sounds like more of an issue with your code/library then an issue with the API.

Are you sure the channel id is the same in those cases? You should add some logging to check.

[LJNeon]

This sounds like more of an issue with your code/library then an issue with the API.

As stated in my original post, I'm using discord.js which is quite popular. I'm fetching the user via client.users.fetch() and sending the DM with user.send(). so I'm not sure what issues could be caused by that?

Are you sure the channel id is the same in those cases? You should add some logging to check.

The channel ID is already in my logs that I included in the original post. What would cause the channel ID to be different in those cases?

[Zoddo]

The channel ID is already in my logs that I included in the original post. What would cause the channel ID to be different in those cases?

Your logs show only the channel ID that errors out. What Darker-Ink likely wanted to check if does successful requests are using the same channel ID.

The API has no notion of "the bot has restarted", so the only way that what you explained makes sense is that a bad channel ID got cached (which may be a bug of discord.js, or something in your code that mutate the cached object by error), and when you restart your bot, it has to refetch the channel ID on the first DM, which fixes it.

[LJNeon]

Your logs show only the channel ID that errors out. What Darker-Ink likely wanted to check if does successful requests are using the same channel ID.

Ahhh my bad, I wasn't aware that the channel ID could change in the first place. It seems like discord.js caches the first channel ID and never checks for a change. I never mutate the cached object (be it user or channel), at least not knowingly. Would sharing more of the source code be helpful here?

I'll confirm whether the channel ID matches the next time the error occurs.