# Discord Bridge

Answer a blocked agent from your phone, from anywhere. Codeman posts to a private Discord
server when a session needs you, gives every tab its own thread, and types your reply in that
thread into that tab. It only makes outbound connections, so nothing is exposed to the internet
and it works when you are away from your network.

**Opt-in, off by default. One server, one channel, threads per tab.**

> **Treat the Discord account like a login to the machine.** A reply from an allowed account is
> typed into agents that can run shell commands. Turn on 2FA and use a strong, unique password.

## What it does

- **Alerts** for permission prompts, questions, idle sessions, errors and a stopped crash loop. A
  question or permission prompt shows what is on the tab's screen right now, so you can see what is
  being asked; a finished turn or an error carries the CLI's whole last message.
- **One thread per tab** in a parent channel, so a reply always reaches exactly one session.
- **Replies** from an allowed user are typed into that tab as one line plus Enter (a single digit answering a waiting permission or question goes as the key alone, without Enter).
- **Files** you attach are saved in the tab's folder and the agent is given the path. An agent can
  send a file back.
- **Agents can ask for you.** `codeman notify "Press the reset button on the case" --urgent`
  posts to the tab's thread. Sessions from the installer or an npm install have the command (a git checkout run without the installer does not); see [below](#telling-the-agents).

## Set it up

The full least-privilege walkthrough (private server, bot, the exact permissions, IDs, token
handling) is in [docs/discord-bridge.md](https://github.com/Ark0N/Codeman/blob/master/docs/discord-bridge.md).
In short:

1. Make a private Discord server with one text channel, and copy the server, channel and your user IDs.
2. Create an application with a bot. Turn **Public Bot** off, turn **Message Content Intent** on, and
   invite it with the `bot` scope and only the permissions the guide lists (no Administrator).
3. In **App Settings → Notifications → Discord**, paste the bot token and the three IDs, press **Save**,
   then **Send test**, then turn **Talk to your sessions from Discord** on and **Save** again.

The token is a secret: it is kept in its own file (`~/.codeman/discord.json`, readable by its owner
only), never in the shared settings, and never shown again once saved.

## Options

| Option                                   | Choices                                     | Default         |
| ---------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | --------------- |
| Create threads                           | On the first alert, or for every new tab    | First alert     |
| When a tab is deleted                    | Keep, archive or delete the thread          | Archive         |
| Stale threads                            | Keep, archive or delete threads no tab uses | Keep            |
| @ ping                                   | Never, critical events only, every post     | Critical only   |
| Which events                             | Needs attention, or everything              | Needs attention |
| Tell Claude how to reach you             | On or off                                   | On              |
| Also tell other CLIs, as a first message | On or off                                   | Off             |

A finished turn, and an error, is posted as the CLI's whole last message, with its formatting and questions
kept, split over several posts if it is long. A shell, and permission or question dialogs, show the last lines
of the screen instead.

Only some CLIs raise a turn end. Claude Code does (an idle alert by default, and a stop alert when **Which
events** is Everything), and DeepSeek Harness sends a stop. The others (Codex, OMP, OpenCode, Gemini,
Antigravity, Pi, Grok, Copilot) send none, so their messages reach Discord with an error or `codeman notify`;
Codex's dialogs are read off its screen.

The stale-thread setting also archives or deletes threads that **When a tab is deleted** kept or archived, because a
deleted tab's thread leaves the bridge's map.

Deleting a thread needs the **Manage Threads** permission on the channel. "Critical" means a
permission prompt, a question, an error, or a post an agent marked urgent.

## Telling the agents

An agent only posts deliberately if it knows it can:

- **Claude** is launched with the instruction as part of its system prompt (**Tell Claude how to reach you**, on by default), so nothing shows in the chat. This reaches local tabs only (remote and Docker tabs have no `codeman` command).
- **Every other CLI** is told only if you turn on **Also tell other CLIs, as a first message** (off by default: it costs one model turn per tab, and for a spawned worker or a scheduled run it arrives with the first real prompt). Then the same text is sent once, as a message, the first time a brand-new tab goes idle.
  Restored tabs, shell tabs, and remote (ssh) and Docker tabs (which have no `codeman` command) are never sent it.

Tabs that were already open when you turned the bridge on are not told. The alerts still reach
Discord for them; only the agent-initiated `codeman notify` habit is missing.

## Files

- **You to the agent:** attach a file to a reply. It is saved as
  `<tab folder>/.codeman-discord/<message id>-<name>` and the line the agent sees ends with
  `[attached: <path>]`. At most 5 files of 8 MB each. The folder ignores itself, so nothing in it is committed.
- **Agent to you:** `codeman notify "message" --file <path>` uploads a file of at most 8 MB that lies
  inside the tab's folder.
- Remote (ssh) tabs have no local folder, so they neither send nor receive files.
- A file you send is untrusted content to the agent that opens it.

## Safety

- Only user IDs on the allowlist, in your server, inside a thread Codeman made, are acted on.
  Everything else is dropped.
- A reply is cut to one printable line (1000 characters) and limited to one per second per tab.
- Posts can ping only the allowlisted users, so agent output cannot ping the whole server.
- A Discord outage or a bad token never affects a session; it backs off, and the last error shows in Settings.

## Troubleshooting

| Symptom                                          | Check                                                          |
| ------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Send test says 401                               | The token is wrong or was reset. Paste the current one.        |
| Send test says the bot cannot see it             | Check the bot's role and the channel ID.                       |
| Posts arrive but replies do nothing              | Message Content Intent is off, or your user ID is not allowed. |
| Status line says "Message Content Intent is off" | Turn it on in the Developer Portal, Bot tab.                   |
| A thread is not deleted                          | The bot lacks Manage Threads on the channel.                   |

See also: [Notifications And Approvals](Notifications-And-Approvals) for the other ways to hear
from an agent, and [Security](Security) for how secrets are handled.