Quickstart

Go from zero to sending Discord messages in under 2 minutes. This guide assumes you have already installed discli and have a Discord bot token. If you need a token, follow the Your First Bot guide first.

Set your bot token

Store your Discord bot token so discli can authenticate:

Terminal window
discli config set token YOUR_BOT_TOKEN
Set token.

This saves the token to ~/.discli/config.json. You only need to do this once.

Tip

You can also pass the token per-command with --token YOUR_BOT_TOKEN or set the DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN environment variable. See Configuration for details.

Send a message

Send a message to a channel your bot has access to:

Terminal window
discli message send "#general" "Hello from discli!"
Message sent to #general (ID: 1234567890123456789)

Check your Discord server — the message should appear in the channel.

Note

Channel identifiers: You can reference channels by name with a # prefix (e.g., #general) or by their raw numeric ID (e.g., 1234567890123456789). Channel names are matched within the server the bot has access to. If your bot is in multiple servers with identically named channels, use the numeric ID to be precise.

Read messages

Fetch the most recent messages from a channel:

Terminal window
discli message list "#general" --limit 5
[2026-03-15 10:32] discli-bot: Hello from discli!
[2026-03-15 10:30] Alice: Has anyone tried the new CLI tool?
[2026-03-15 10:28] Bob: Good morning everyone!
[2026-03-15 10:15] Alice: Welcome to the server!
[2026-03-15 09:45] Bob: Hey folks

The output shows the most recent messages, newest first, with timestamps and authors.

Try JSON output

Add the --json flag to get structured output, perfect for piping to other tools or feeding to an AI agent:

Terminal window
discli --json message list "#general" --limit 3
[
  {
    "id": "1234567890123456789",
    "author": "discli-bot",
    "author_id": "9876543210987654321",
    "content": "Hello from discli!",
    "timestamp": "2026-03-15T10:32:00+00:00",
    "channel": "general",
    "channel_id": "1111111111111111111",
    "is_bot": true
  },
  {
    "id": "1234567890123456780",
    "author": "Alice",
    "author_id": "2222222222222222222",
    "content": "Has anyone tried the new CLI tool?",
    "timestamp": "2026-03-15T10:30:00+00:00",
    "channel": "general",
    "channel_id": "1111111111111111111",
    "is_bot": false
  },
  {
    "id": "1234567890123456770",
    "author": "Bob",
    "author_id": "3333333333333333333",
    "content": "Good morning everyone!",
    "timestamp": "2026-03-15T10:28:00+00:00",
    "channel": "general",
    "channel_id": "1111111111111111111",
    "is_bot": false
  }
]
Tip

The --json flag works with every command. It is placed before the subcommand: discli --json message list, not discli message list --json.

What else can you do?

Here are a few more commands to try:

Terminal window
# List servers your bot is in
discli server list


# List channels in a server
discli channel list "My Server"


# Send a DM to a user
discli dm send @username "Hey there!"


# React to a message
discli reaction add "#general" MESSAGE_ID "👍"


# Search messages
discli message search "#general" "search term"


# Start a real-time event stream
discli listen

Run discli --help or discli <command> --help to explore all available commands and options.

Next steps

Your First Bot

Build a working Discord bot agent from scratch with discli serve.

Configuration

Learn about token management, permission profiles, and config options.

CLI Usage Guide

Deep dive into all available commands and day-to-day usage patterns.

Building Agents

Build progressively more autonomous AI agents on top of discli.

Last updated: March 17, 2026
2 min read
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