Discord Bot Best Practices

If you are making a publically available bot, you should probably follow these best practices. The goal is to keep servers as clean as possible and their users as happy as possible!

ALL BOTS SHOULD ALWAYS follow the Discord Terms of Service, Community Guidelines, and Developer Policy.

All Bots Should…

• ❌ NEVER abuse the Discord platform in any way.
• ❌ NEVER modify a user’s account in any way without explicit permission from the user.
• ❌ NEVER give targeted advertisements.
  • ❗ This includes DM advertising, such as randomly messaging a user with a link or ad.
• ❌ NEVER “scrape” data.
  • ❗ This includes logging more information than necessary to run the bot effectively.
  • ❗ This also includes collecting information on users for analytics purposes without their permission.
• ❌ NEVER sell or share a user’s data in any way, except for communicating with an API to serve the user.
• ❌ NEVER retain data longer than necessary to run the bot effectively.
• ❌ NEVER knowingly serve children under the age of 13.
• ❌ NEVER do or encourage anything illegal.
• ❌ NEVER post anything with NSFW content outside of an NSFW channel in any way.
  • ❗ This includes DMing users NSFW content without their explicit permission.
• ❌ NEVER abuse an API in any way.
• ❌ NEVER mention users unless absolutely necessary.
• ❌ AVOID using common prefixes, or allow the user to set their own prefix.
  • ❌ AVOID using common prefixes, such as !, $, ?, ., and -. These prefixes are common, and will likely overlap with other bots, causing several bots to attempt to do the same thing.
  • ❌ NEVER using @ or # prefixes. Discord uses these characters to denote a user and channel mention, respectively.
    • ⭕ EXCEPTION a good practice is for your bot to use their mention as a prefix. For example, if my bot is called Foobar and has the 0001 tag, set the bot’s prefix to @Foobar#0001.
  • ✔️ Use a unique prefix. This could be a prefix that pertains to your bot somehow, such as your bot’s initials followed by a special character. For example, if your bot is called Foobar, you might want the prefix to be fb!.
  • ❌ NEVER use multiple prefixes. This increases the chance of a prefix collision.
    • ⭕ EXCEPTION if your bot’s prefixes are a unicode prefix (fb!) and a mention (@Foobar#0001)
• ❌ NEVER respond with “invalid command”. If a user sends a command that does not exist, do not reply with “invalid command”. This just clutters up the channel.
• ✔️ ALWAYS respond “invalid arguments”. If a user sends a valid command with invalid arguments, respond with more info about how to use that command.
• ✔️ ALWAYS respond only to explicitly invoked commands. Bots should not respond to normal chat messages not intended to invoke the bot.
  • ⭕ EXCEPTION Automod bots:
    • Automod bots should only take action on messages silently. If a message violates a rule and is deleted, it should be deleted without the bot posting a message in the channel.
    • If an automod takes an action, however, it should always be logged to a modlog.
    • The exception to this rule is if “extreme” action, such as kicking, banning, or muting, is taken, the user should be notified by DM if possible.
• ✔️ ALWAYS have an info command. This should provide basic info such as:
  • ✔️ The library used to run the bot, and what version.
  • ✔️ The usernames of the bot’s creators.
  • ✔️ A link to the bot’s support server. (If applicable)
  • ✔️ A link to the bot’s website. (If applicable)
  • ✔️ Who to contact for questions or concerns.
• ✔️ ALWAYS ignore other bot’s commands. Your bot should not reply to other bots. Read your library’s docs to see how to do that.
• ✔️ ALWAYS allow the bot to respond to a mention. The response can be either a help message or a simple message telling the user what the bot’s prefix is.
• ✔️ ALWAYS have error handling. If your bot encounters an error because of a ratelimit or invalid permissions, it should inform the user that there was an error and what the error was. It should not fail and crash silently.