NextBot: Next.js Discord Bot Template

NextBot is a Discord bot template built with Next.js and configured to run at the Edge. It's designed to be simple to setup and deploy — you should be able to get started with NextBot in <5 minutes!

• Runs in Edge Runtime: Lightning-fast responses with no cold starts, plus more generous free tier than serverless.
• Free & easy to deploy: Deploy to Vercel in seconds at no cost. No need to host a server or VM to run your bot! Don't bother with Heroku, EC2, etc.
• Extensible and scalable: Leverage Next.js to create a corresponding web app for your bot, or use features like next/og to generate dynamic images!

Try it out

Join the Demo Server to try out NextBot. Here are some commands I've added to the demo bot as an example of what you can build!

Command	Description
/pokemon	Returns an image that contains a Pokemon's sprite, name, and pokedex number. The image is generated dynamically using next/og.
/ping	Ping pong! The bot will respond with "Pong".
/invite	Returns a link to invite the bot to your own server.
/randompic	Returns a random picture.

Or add NextBot to your own server with this link: https://discord.com/api/oauth2/authorize?client_id=837427503059435530&permissions=2147485696&scope=bot%20applications.commands

You can also send slash commands to the bot via DM as long as you're in a mutual server with the it!

• Development
  • Setup
  • Local Development
• Deploy to Production
• How It Works
  • File Structure
• Why Next.js (instead of Express, serverless, or Cloudflare Workers)?

Development

See https://nextjs.org/docs/getting-started/installation for minimum requirements.

Setup

These steps only need to be done once.

• Clone the repo. This is a template repository so you can click the green "Use this template" button on GitHub to create your own repo!
• Run yarn to install dependencies.
• Create a new Discord application.
  • In the Bot settings of your Discord application, enable the Message Content intent.
• Fill out environment variables:
  • In the root of the repository, copy .env.local.example into a new file .env.local. Fill out the values using the real values from your Discord app.
• Register some slash commands for your bot. I've included a script to register the commands included in the demo bot.
  • Run yarn register-commands to execute the script! You only need to run this once, unless you add new commands.
  • You can learn more about registering commands in the Discord API docs

Local Development

Once you've completed the setup steps above, you're ready to run the bot locally!

Discord can only send events to a public https address. You'll need an HTTP tunneling service like ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel when developing locally. For this guide, I'll be using ngrok.

• Run yarn dev to start the Next.js application.
• Assuming you're using ngrok, run ngrok http 3000 to start your HTTP tunnel.
• In the Discord app settings, set Interactions Endpoint URL to <YOUR_PUBLIC_TUNNELED_NGROK_URL>/api/interactions. Make sure to use the https URL!
• Save changes in the Discord app settings.
• Set the value of ROOT_URL in .env.local to your ngrok URL.

In order to verify your interactions endpoint URL, Discord will send a PING message to your bot, and the bot should reply with a PONG (see src/pages/api/interactions.ts). If this is successful, your bot is ready to go!

You can now add your bot to your Discord server and try it out! Use Discord's URL generator in OAuth2 -> URL Generator of your Discord app's settings to generate an invite link. Make sure to select:

• bot + applications.commands for scopes
• Send Messages + Use Slash Commands for bot permissions

After adding the bot to a server, try out one of the slash commands like /ping or randompic!

• You can try modifying the response of the /ping command and the changes should be reflected immediately.
• You're ready to add your own commands!

Note: whenever you terminate/restart your ngrok tunnel, you'll need to update the Interactions Endpoint URL in the Discord app settings accordingly.

Deployment

This project is designed to be deployed on Vercel. I recommend that you create a new Discord Application for your production application! This makes it easier to test local changes.

Here are some things you should remember to do when deploying:

• Set the environment variables in Vercel accordingly.
• Set <YOUR_VERCEL_URL>/api/interactions as the Interactions Endpoint URL in your production Discord app.
• Register commands for the production bot. You can still use yarn register-commands, as long as you temporarily update .env.local on your local machine with the correct values.

Of course, you don't have to use Vercel. Any platform that supports Next.js should work!

How It Works

Unlike traditional Discord bots which maintain a persistent connection with Discord (and thus require managing your own servers), NextBot uses Discord's Interactions Endpoint to respond to interactions (such as slash commands).

The Interactions Endpoint is now Discord's recommended approach to building bots. If you haven't already, I recommend you read the Getting Started and Receiving and Responding pages of Discord's documentation to learn more about Interactions, Slash Commands, and Discord bots!

And be sure to check out the rest of the Discord docs to see all the awesome stuff you can do aside from basic Slash commands!

File Structure

• src/app/api/interactions/route.ts: This is the main route handler for the Interactions Endpoint. It receives interactions from Discord and handles them accordingly.
• src/discord/verify-incoming-request.ts: Helper functions to verify incoming requests from Discord, as outlined in https://discord.com/developers/docs/interactions/receiving-and-responding#security-and-authorization.
• src/app/page.tsx: A basic web page. This could be your admin portal or whatever you'd like!

Why Next.js (instead of Express, serverless, or Cloudflare Workers)?

NextBot leverages Next.js Route Handlers to receive and respond to interactions. But why Next.js specifically — couldn't we host a typical node app on AWS Lambda?

• Next.js is a full web-app framework, making it easy to build an accompanying web app to go along with your Discord app. An example of this can be seen in src/app/page.tsx.
• You can use Next.js features like @vercel/og. The /pokemon command demonstrates this! It generates a dynamic image at runtime, and responses are cached at the edge.
• Compared to serverless (i.e. AWS Lambda), edge is faster (no cold start) and cheaper (edge has a more generous free tiers and is cheaper per request)
• Vercel scales out very effectively for a more complex Discord bot, for example if you need to add analytics, logging, auth, etc.

Note: Discord's official docs include a full tutorial for hosting a Discord bot on Cloudflare Workers. This is the best comparison to NextBot: Next's edge runtime is built on Cloudflare Workers!

In the /pokemon command, I demonstrate some of the powerful Next.js features that can use!

• The image in the response is generated dynamically using next/og.
• Requests to PokeAPI are cached automatically by Next.js
• The dynamic image itself is also cached, so it only needs to be generated once.