Set up a Discord bot for HermesAgent¶

This guide shows you how to create the Discord application, bot user, and token your HermesAgent needs to talk to Discord. The Discord-side steps are one-time per bot and take about five minutes.

You will end up with two things to plug into your CR:

A bot token (a long secret string).
A bot invited to your server with the right scopes.

1. Create the application¶

Go to the Discord Developer Portal and click New Application. Give it a name (this is the application name; you can rename the bot separately).

2. Create the bot user¶

In the left nav, open Bot. The bot user already exists for new applications. Note the bot's username.

Click Reset Token to reveal a new bot token. Copy it now; Discord will not show it again. You will paste this into a Kubernetes Secret in the next section.

3. Enable MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT¶

Still on the Bot page, scroll to Privileged Gateway Intents and toggle MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT on. Save changes.

This is the most common first-boot crashloop

Without MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT, the agent crashloops on first boot with discord.errors.PrivilegedIntentsRequired. The fix is to come back here and toggle the intent on, then restart the pod.

4. Invite the bot to your server¶

In the left nav, open OAuth2 → URL Generator.

Scopes: tick bot.
Bot Permissions: at minimum tick View Channels, Send Messages, Read Message History. Add more if you want the agent to be able to (for example) embed images or use slash commands.

Copy the generated URL at the bottom, open it in a browser, pick a server you administer, and authorise. The bot now appears in the member list.

5. Capture the bot token in a Secret¶

kubectl create namespace hermes
kubectl -n hermes create secret generic my-agent-creds \
    --from-literal=DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN='<the-token-you-copied>' \
    --from-literal=DEEPSEEK_API_KEY='<your-llm-api-key>'

Keep the bot token out of any file checked into source control. If it leaks, return to the Bot page and click Reset Token; the old token stops working immediately.

6. Reference the Secret from your HermesAgent¶

spec:
  gateways:
    - type: discord
      env:
        - name: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN
          valueFrom:
            secretKeyRef: { name: my-agent-creds, key: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN }

Full example: Your first HermesAgent (Discord).

Optional: lock the bot to specific users or channels¶

Add allowlist env vars on the same gateway entry. Upstream Hermes interprets these:

gateways:
  - type: discord
    env:
      - name: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN
        valueFrom:
          secretKeyRef: { name: my-agent-creds, key: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN }
      - { name: DISCORD_ALLOWED_USERS, value: "123456789012345678" }
      - { name: DISCORD_ALLOWED_CHANNELS, value: "987654321098765432" }

Member IDs and channel IDs are 18-digit snowflakes. Right-click in the Discord client (with Developer Mode enabled) and choose Copy ID.

Verify¶

After kubectl apply-ing the CR:

kubectl -n hermes logs deployment/hermes-my-agent -c agent --tail=30

Look for Logged in as <bot-name>. DM the bot from a Discord client; you should get a reply within a few seconds.