discord-poll-bot

A major ship after creation.
There were a lot of changes, especially complicated ones. I learned a lot about how to deal with external services like APIs, webhooks, etc.
I feel like the most challenging part has to be aligning with external services’ standards. What I mean is making MY product compatible with other ones. The AI models sometimes take too long to respond or throw temporary errors, so the bot had to retry quietly and switch to backups. Discord also has a strict 55-character limit on poll answer buttons. Early on, the AI would generate great answers that were slightly too long, causing the post to fail completely until text trimming was put in place. Another tricky part was multi-server isolation, making sure a missing channel or permission error in one server would never delay or crash the daily poll for other servers.

The thing I am most proud of is the bot’s flexibility. The fact that it can work anywhere, pick any channel, handle invites, join any server, catch up if something messes up, and correct itself. It can do all of that itself. It’s very flexible and “agentic” and autonomous, since humans don’t really need to babysit it. Once it’s running, it manages trivia, scoring, weekly recaps, etc.

Lastly, how to actually run it:
All the info is in the README, but to summarize,

1. Locally: clone the repo, fill in .env.example, and run npm run
2. Click Try Project; it should take you to a server where you can test it out.
3. Invite it to your own server!

HAVE FUN AND THANK YOU!

A bot that posts AI polls daily but is wayy cooler than you think.

Core Features

• Daily AI Polls: Automatically posts fresh AI-related polls in your server every day.
• AI Summaries: Provides a weekly AI summary every Sunday (customizable scheduling coming soon).
• Poll Memory: Remembers previously asked polls to prevent repeats.
• Points & Leaderboard:
  • Awards points to users who answer polls correctly
  • Maintains a dynamic leaderboard for your server
• Chat with the Bot:
  • Mention the bot or set it to respond without direct pings
  • Can be customized for retroactive message responses

Additional Features

• Custom Polls: Create your own polls with custom options and durations
• Anonymous Voting: Option for anonymous poll participation
• Poll Results: View poll results after voting ends
• Poll Scheduling: Schedule polls for specific dates and times
• Role-Restricted Polls: Limit poll participation to specific roles
• Poll Management:
  • Edit, close, or delete polls as needed
  • Archive past polls for reference
• User-Friendly Commands: Simple, clear command structure for creating and managing polls
• Rich Poll Embeds: Visually appealing poll display using Discord embeds
• Extensible: Open-source and easy to customize/extend for your own needs

For the full list of features and setup instructions, refer to the README.