The June 2022 Discord Developer Stage

Stage 2022-06-25.md

Recording by @Wolfhound905

User Survey

• Sets context for API and App updates
• Survey was sent out to bot users
• 60% of respondents have used Slash Commands; this went up over time
• 50% of users say the main reason they like Slash Commands is Discoverability
  • Incl. features such as Autocomplete and Message Components
• Top two features users struggle with
  • Telling different Applications apart
    • Especially for bots with significant oveerlap in features
    • Some level of confusion here; UI updates and User Education will help
  • Execution speed
    • Speed of populating the command picker
    • Speed of replaying commands
    • Being worked on

Apps and API Updates

• Message Content Privileged Intent: 31st Aug 2022 is the deadline.

  • Just over two months remain.

• Permissions 2.0

  • Well received by mods
  • Permissions was a gap in the initial release
    • Finishing designs on doing this properly; very complicated UI challenge
    • Improvements will be made over time

• Bot Permssions in Interaction Payload

  • Send bot permissions as part of command, is planned.

• Permissions for interactions

  • Currently use @/everyone
  • Has been confusing for mods and devs
  • Change: For Applications that have a bot in the server, Interaction Webhooks will inherit the Bot's Permissions.
  • Where there is no Bot User, fall back on @/everyone permissions.
  • No ETA; but will happen.

• Legacy Command Searcher:

  • Suggests Slash Commands when a matching Content Command is detected
  • Has helped Discoverability

• Scope Migration

  • Will work differently from last time
  • Make sure all bots get the applications.commands scope if needed; as many bots need it now that didn't before.
  • This will include education for Moderators re: Slash Commands and let them explicitly choose to turn them on.
  • Rollout will be slower than last time; this is intentional to ensure mods are not surprised.

• bot OAuth scope implies applications.commands scope.

  • Fixes old invite links.

• Hopefully all OAuth scope issues should be resolved by the deadline. (paraphrased from @/Mason#1337

• Working on making things faster

  • Smarter fuzzy matching
  • More caching

• Mention Slash COmmands

• Up-arrow behaviour to rerun commands

• Better command copy-pasting

• Plans for Mobile too

• For migration and education:

• Experiment: Show on Bot Profiles that Slash Commands are used

  • Include frequently used commands
  • Users check bot profiles frequently

Large Bot Developer Panel

panelists:

• quin#3017 [He/Him]: Discord.Net Maintainer

• Coding#0001 [He/They]: Truth or Dare Bot Developer

• Melmsie#0001 [He/They]: Dank Memer Developer

• aetheryx#0001 [He/Him]: Dank Memer Lead Developer

• shaydew#7429 [She/They]: Discord Developer Advocate

• Experience porting to Interactions:

  • Coding
    • Was intimidating to rewrite
    • Argument parsing is a big pro
    • HTTP Interactions are useful
      • No more websocket maintenance
      • Easier to scale
      • Works well at ToD Bot's high scale.
  • aetheryx
    • Agree with Coding
      • Argument parsing is a "huge relief"
    • At first there were few libraries with proper support
    • Especially regarding HTTP Interactions
    • Everything does make sense however
  • quin
    • Application Commands were his start to library development
    • In Dec-2020 he was using Discord.NET and worked on Appplication Command support
    • Felt people wanted more ease in writing them
    • Integrating Application Commands in existing libraries was difficult

• Libraries and Application Commands

  • quin
    • Libraries already have support for commands based on Message Content
    • Developers don't want breakage
    • Create something easy to adopt for developers

• User Experience: Struggles onboarding users

  • Melmsie
    • We haven't released our full implementation, but have open betas
    • We learned that simply telling users doesn't work; users aren't used to Slash Commands
    • They have reported the UX as a bug
    • Use screenshots to onboard users
    • Hopefully Discord improves in this respect
    • Bots can explain but Discord can do it better
  • Coding
    • Onboarding was hard because the bot shut down
    • Old invites were not updated
    • Hard cut to slash commands
    • Old commands were replied to with a new invite
    • Helpdesk in the support server helped in the transition: actively helping users transition
    • This was automated for FAQs re: Slash Commands.
  • Melmsie RE: Beta UX
    • Biggest takeaway was the sentiment to Slash Commadsn was negative; including from users
    • Users likes Slash Commands more after a week of use
    • UX between platforms is significantly different
    • PC users were more positive about Slash Commands
    • Mobile users were positive about Message Components
    • Lots of fine tuning was required; but users gave good feedback
  • aetheryx
    • Scalability was improved
    • Handled 500k Interactions/minute; much better than websockets
    • Use k8s to handle scaling and orchestration
  • Coding RE: transition to Slash Commands
    • Original developer was paying $90/mo over 9 VPSs
    • Had stability issues
    • HTTP Interactions made the bot stable and reduced costs to $3/mo

Have slash commands been more or less flexible in terms of the UX you can develop or create?

• Coding:
  • Buttons were helpful for Mobile users
• Melmsie
  • Autocomplete increases flexibility and allows for User Education
    • "Gamechanging"

Did you develop your own library? What is the maintenance like?

• aetheryx:
  • Developed their own library
  • Made sure it was polished so that the rewrite would go smoothly
  • Uses TypeScript to take advantage of compile time type chacking
  • Every command has a property to specify the API level structure; "elegantly" handles making API payloads.
  • people talk too fast I missed something
  • Uses discord-api-types for type checking

Plans on maintaining Message Content Commands/broaden the transition timeline:

• quin
  • Discord.NET plans to maintain both long-term
  • Strongly pushes Slash Commands for DX reasons
• Melmsie
  • Not good for User Education, especailly as Discord adds features such as Autocomplete that create a large difference between different Users' experience

Favourite feature/Wishlist:

• Coding:
  • Favourite: is HTTP Interactions
  • Wishlist: is send more information in HTTP interactions such as Channel information
• Quin:
  • Wishlist: Date/Time Picker
  • Favourite: Modals to input large amounts of text
• Melmsie
  • Favourite: Autocomplete
  • Wishlist: more buttons
• aetheryx
  • Favourite: Ephemeral Responses

Ending Questions to Mason

More customisation options?

• Yes! More scope for customisation would be good.
• The form that takes is still under consideration.

Components for Modals?

• Attachments? Yes
• Selects are being worked on, were almost done but technical constraints got in the way
• More support for things is desirable; but not Buttons.

Paginated Modals:

• Good idea for a fully fledged form.

NSFW Flag for Slash Commands

• Yes. Being worked on by popular demand.
• "This feature will come"
• Ensure policy is clear for everyone

Command Cooldowns/Ratelimits:

• Upvote on GH Discussions
• Could work like Slow Mode

Upvote discussions on GH! Submit fixes!

appreciate this :D