project · discord bot

Discord
ActivityBot

a bot that let people in discord voice channels launch shared activities together. youtube, poker, chess and more. before discord made it a built-in thing.

Archived Node.js Discord API TypeScript

View on GitHub

// This project is archived

discord shipped Activities as a native feature in 2022 and made the bot pointless. rather than keep maintaining something the platform does itself i archived it. code is still up on github if you want to look at it.

what it did

DiscordActivityBot hooked into discords voice channel embed system so people could launch shared activity sessions without leaving discord. no external links, no third party sites. just a bot command and everyone in the channel could join the same thing.

it worked by generating discord activity embed invites through api endpoints that were undocumented at the time. i figured out how it worked, built around it and shipped it.

this was before discord documented any of it. i built it because i wanted it to exist.

built when discord activities were undocumented and only accessible through bots. discord later shipped it natively to every client. classic case of the platform catching up.

supported activities

YouTube Together

Watch party

Poker Night

Card game

Chess in the Park

Board game

Betrayal.io

Social deduction

Fishington

Idle / casual

Letter Tile

Word game

built with

TypeScript Node.js discord.js Discord REST API Slash Commands Invite Generation Voice Channel Embeds

// core invite generation - the key trick
const invite = await client.api
  .channels(voiceChannel.id)
  .invites.post({
    data: {
      max_age: 86400,
      max_uses: 0,
      target_type: 2, // embedded application
      target_application_id: applicationId,
    }
  });
    

project history

2021

Initial Build

Discord Activities existed as an internal/limited feature. I reverse-engineered the embed invite flow and built the first version of the bot to make it accessible via slash commands.

2022

Added More Activities & Stability Fixes

Expanded the activity list as Discord added more. Improved error handling around invite expiry and invalid channel types. Added permission checks.

2022 - discord ships it natively

Archived

discord rolled out activities as a first-party feature for all voice channels. every server got it for free. the bot became pointless overnight, which is honestly the best reason to archive something.

what i learned

working with undocumented apis. reading network traffic, reverse engineering request shapes and staying stable when endpoints change.
discord bot architecture. slash commands, permission handling, voice channel context and managing state across servers.
shipping something useful before the platform gets there. the bot worked and people used it. that matters regardless of what happened after.
knowing when to let go. maintaining a tool the platform now does natively is wasted effort. archive it, move on, build something new.

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