AetheBot for Discord

Setup

Using Node.js

Install Yarn Classic (1.x). Yarn is a hard requirement for AetheBot, npm will not work, and support for npm is not in scope for this project.

Current required version of Node.js is specified in .node-version.

Create a Discord Bot account here.

Copy the token it generated.

Create a development.env file in the root of this repo.

Inside this file, paste the token like this:

DISCORD_TOKEN=[token]
DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER=[your discord user ID]

To run, recommend using Visual Studio Code, since it'll use the development.env file. See section below.

Using Bun

Install Bun 1.1.6 or newer.

Create a Discord Bot account here.

Copy the token it generated.

Create a .env.local file in the root of this repo.

Inside this file, paste the token like this:

DISCORD_TOKEN=[token]
DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER=[your discord user ID]

Run with Bun:

bun run src/index.ts --brainPath ./brain.json

Not working (as of 1.1.6):

• Workers, at least when using bun build. Probably works if I package the code into the docker image, just like Node, but at that point why not just use Node?

Initial Setup

Make sure you have DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER set to your Discord user ID, you can find it by enabling Developer Mode in Discord, then right clicking yourself in the user list, and clicking Copy User ID.

Start the bot using the instructions above. When you do, it will print out a URL into standard output that you can use to join the bot to a server. You must have permission on the server to do this. Finally, once you've joined the bot to a server, send it a direct message containing exactly: admin deploy commands to deploy the slash commands. You will need to re-run this any time you change the slash commands.

Can You Join My Server?

AetheBot is not a hosted service. However, it is open source, and you are free to use it in any way as specified in the license, including hosting your own copy of the bot. I recommend forking the repo, and editing src/index.ts to change the features that get loaded into the bot to better suit your specific needs.

Debugging in Visual Studio Code

Currently only works with Node.js.

With Node Installed

If you've got Node installed on your system, either via nvm, nodenv, or compiling it manually, you should just be able to run the debugger by pressing F5 in Visual Studio Code. Make sure you've run yarn install first! Also, make sure the configuration in the debugger tab (drop down, top left) is set to "Launch Using System Node".

Running Node Inside Docker

Change to the debugger tab and change the configuration (drop down, top left) from "Launch Using System Node" to "Launch in Docker (Debug Bot)". The first time you run this you will need to pull down all the node_modules compiled against the Linux that runs in Docker:

rm -rf node_modules
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.dev.yml run bot yarn install

Now you can go back into Visual Studio Code and press F5 to start. Note that when running in Docker, it runs the Bot process and the Website process as completely separate node processes, which communicate with each other via a Redis PubSub channel. By default, Visual Studio Code will attach its debugger to the Bot process, you can change this by using the "Launch in Docker (Web)" configuration instead.

The node processes running in Docker will automatically restart when the code is recompiled. You can automate this to happen whenever you modify a TypeScript file by running yarn tsc -w on your host.

The website will run under http://localhost:8080

Environment Variables

Variable	Required?	Purpose	Example
DISCORD_TOKEN	Yes	The generated Discord Bot account token for authentication with Discord.	aaabbbccc111222333
WEBSITE_BASE_URL	No	The base URL for the bot's internal website. Leave undefined to not run the website.	https://my-great-aethebot-instance.herokuapp.com
DEFAULT_ADMIN_USER	No	Discord User ID for the default admin user.	12345678901234567
REDIS_URL	No	URL to your Redis instance, to use as the bot's persistent storage.	redis://user:password@my-redis.host:13337

Creating a Voice Noise

The voice noises themselves are in an object in src/features/voicenoise/noises.ts. Provide the file name for the noise to play, and a regular expression to match on. It will play the noise in the channel you are currently in if the regex matches and you've mentioned the bot. Please keep try to keep the volume of your noise consistent with the other noises.

Noises can be provided in .opus format, 64kbps mono. Please listen to some of the existing voice noises and adjust the volume accordingly.