Set up the Discord bot

On a self-hosted Qwest, the Discord bot is your own Discord application. You set it up once, then every project can use it.

Qwest must be public

Discord sends commands to your server over the internet, so Qwest needs a public address. It doesn’t work over Tailscale or a studio network.

1. Create the application

1. Go to the Discord Developer Portal and click New Application. Name it (your players will see it), like Qwest or your studio’s name.
2. On General Information, copy the Application ID and the Public Key.
3. On Bot, click Reset Token and copy the token. It’s shown only once.

2. Add them to .env

In your qwest folder:

DISCORD_APPLICATION_ID=123456789012345678
DISCORD_PUBLIC_KEY=abc123…
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=MTIz…

All three go together. Restart:

docker compose up -d

The logs (docker compose logs qwest) should say discord: commands registered.

3. Tell Discord where Qwest is

Back on General Information, set Interactions Endpoint URL to your address followed by /api/discord/interactions:

https://qwest.yourstudio.com/api/discord/interactions

Click Save Changes. Discord checks it right away. If it refuses, make sure Qwest is running and the address opens in a browser.

4. Connect a project

In Qwest, a project owner opens Project settings›Discord and follows the two steps there: Add to Discord, then Get a code and type /qwest setup with it in the Discord server. See Discord for what your team and players can do with it.