Windows Quirks

discli works on Windows, but there are a few platform-specific behaviors to be aware of. This page documents them and their workarounds.

stdin in serve mode

Issue: Python’s asyncio does not support reading from stdin on Windows the way it does on Unix. discli works around this by using an internal threading-based stdin reader.

This is transparent in normal use — you write JSONL to stdin and discli processes it. However, there are two edge cases:

• Ctrl+C may not terminate cleanly. The stdin reader thread can keep the process alive after a keyboard interrupt.
• Subprocess cleanup needs explicit handling in your agent code.

Fix: When controlling discli serve from another program, use proc.terminate() instead of relying on Ctrl+C:

import subprocess, signal

proc = subprocess.Popen(
    ["discli", "serve", "--events", "messages"],
    stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
    stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
    text=True,
)

try:
    for line in proc.stdout:
        # process events...
        pass
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    proc.terminate()  # Clean shutdown on Windows
    proc.wait(timeout=5)

Path separators

Issue: Windows uses backslashes (\) in file paths. discli normalizes paths internally, but you may see backslashes in error messages or config output.

Fix: Use forward slashes everywhere. They work in both PowerShell and cmd.exe:

# Both work on Windows
discli message send "#logs" "report" --file C:/Users/you/report.csv
discli message send "#logs" "report" --file C:\Users\you\report.csv

The config file lives at %USERPROFILE%\.discli\config.json (or ~/.discli/config.json with forward slashes).

PowerShell vs cmd.exe quoting

String quoting behaves differently between PowerShell and cmd.exe. Here are the correct forms for each:

# Single quotes work for simple strings
discli message send '#general' 'Hello from PowerShell!'

# Double quotes for variable interpolation
$channel = "#general"
discli message send $channel "Deploy complete at $(Get-Date)"

# Escape double quotes inside double-quoted strings
discli message send '#general' "He said `"hello`""

# JSON output piped to ConvertFrom-Json
discli --json message list '#general' --limit 5 | ConvertFrom-Json

:: Double quotes only in cmd.exe
discli message send "#general" "Hello from cmd!"

:: Escape inner quotes with backslash
discli message send "#general" "He said \"hello\""

:: JSON output piped to a file
discli --json message list "#general" --limit 5 > messages.json

# Standard Unix quoting — works as expected
discli message send '#general' 'Hello from bash!'
discli message send "#general" "Hello from bash!"

# Pipe to jq
discli --json message list '#general' --limit 5 | jq '.[0].content'

Unicode and emoji in cmd.exe

Issue: The default cmd.exe code page (437) cannot display Unicode characters including emoji. You will see garbled output or question marks.

Fix: Switch to UTF-8 before running discli:

chcp 65001
discli message list "#general" --limit 5

To make this permanent, you can set the default code page in the Windows Registry or use Windows Terminal, which defaults to UTF-8.

pip not on PATH

Issue: After installing Python from python.org, pip and discli may not be on your PATH. You get 'pip' is not recognized or 'discli' is not recognized.

Fix:

:: Use python -m pip instead
python -m pip install discord-cli-agent

:: Find where scripts are installed
python -m site --user-site

:: Or use py launcher (installed with Python on Windows)
py -m pip install discord-cli-agent

After installing, the discli executable is placed in Python’s Scripts directory. Add it to your PATH:

# PowerShell — find the path
python -c "import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_path('scripts'))"

# Add it permanently (PowerShell, run as admin)
$scriptsPath = python -c "import sysconfig; print(sysconfig.get_path('scripts'))"
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path + ";$scriptsPath", "User")

Long path support

Issue: Windows has a default path length limit of 260 characters. If your username is long or discli’s config directory is deeply nested, you may see file access errors.

Fix: Enable long path support in Windows 10/11:

Alternatively, set the registry key directly:

# PowerShell (run as admin)
New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem" `
  -Name "LongPathsEnabled" -Value 1 -PropertyType DWORD -Force