Creating a basic Discord bot in Python

I’ve been enthralled with making Discord bots for the past several months — fairly basic ones to ones that make API calls (for a Hackathon I competed in).

I’ll go through the steps of creating a simple Discord bot in Python, using the Pycord (a more modern wrapper for Discord.py) that let’s you create custom slash commands to display a gif.

Firstly, I’ll be using Visual Studio Code, but feel free to use any other Python IDE (Sublime, Notepad++, etc.)

First we want to make sure we have the latest version of Python installed on our PC. Open up your command prompt and type

python --version

The latest version of Python as of writing is 3.10.4

If you do not have Python downloaded, head over to https://www.python.org/downloads/ to get the latest version.

Next we will need to download Pycord. Within your code editor or command prompt, copy and paste the following:

pip install git+https://github.com/Pycord-Development/pycord

After we’ve got our Python prerequisites installed we can begin setting up our bot on Discord’s developer portal. You will want to create an account at https://discord.com/developers , afterwards from https://discord.com/developers/applications you can create a new application for your bot.

Give it a name. In this example we’ll name the application Gif Commander (this is not the name of your bot — just the application).

Once the application has been named we’ll see the following on the left side of the screen:

We want to select “Bot” and then “Add Bot”.

Once the bot has been created you’ll want to grab the token, if it’s not shown to you click “Reset Token” (if you have 2FA enabled this will require you to verify through your auth app).

You want to keep the token secret — I am showing mine for example, but have reset it since.

Now, within my file explorer I will create a new folder for the bot to keep things organized and open that empty folder within VS Code.