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Every 5 minutes

Answer questions in your help channel

People who mention your bot in #help get an answer within minutes, and bug reports are copied to the right channel.

Runs
Every 5 minutes
Apps
Discord
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
Read Message History, Send Messages, Message Content intent

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every 5 minutes, check #help on my Discord for new messages that mention the bot, reply with a helpful answer, and copy any bug reports to #bugs.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A community server with 3,000 members gets the same questions every day: how to reset a password, where the docs are, which channel is for feature requests. Moderators answer them one at a time, and requests land in the wrong channel, so a bug report is buried under memes. Volunteers burn out repeating themselves, and members who ask at 3 a.m. wait hours for a reply.

Every five minutes the bot reads messages that arrived after the last one it saw, keeps those that mention it, and has ClickRuntime's built-in AI write a reply in a thread or decide which channel the request belongs in and post it there. No separate AI key is needed, and the rules and links it uses come from the instructions you give your AI assistant.

Open-source projects, game communities and product support servers are the usual users.

What you get out of it

  • Common questions answered at any hour

    A member asking at midnight gets a useful reply within minutes. That first quick answer often decides whether a new member stays on the server or quietly leaves before anyone has helped them.

  • Moderators spend time on real judgment

    When routine questions are handled, volunteers can focus on disputes, rule enforcement and the people who need a human. They return to the work that a bot cannot do, and burn out less from repeating the same explanation.

  • Requests land where they will be seen

    Sorting a bug report into the bugs channel and a feature idea into suggestions means the right group sees each one. Good sorting also keeps the channel list useful to people who search it later.

  • Threaded replies keep channels tidy

    Answering in a thread leaves the main channel readable, so other conversations are not interrupted by long explanations. Members who care can follow the thread, and everyone else scrolls past it without noticing.

  • No duplicate handling of old messages

    Remembering the last message seen means each mention is processed once, even if a run is delayed or the bot is paused for a day. That protects members from receiving the same answer twice or an old question being answered again.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every 5 minutes, ClickRuntime reads new messages in your Discord help channel since the last one it saw.

  2. It keeps only messages that mention your bot.

  3. AI either writes an answer to the question or decides it is a bug report.

  4. Answers are posted as a reply in the help channel, and bug reports are passed on to your bugs channel.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Discord

What you get

RunsEvery 5 minutes
Answer questions in your help channeltoday, 9:00Succeeded
Discord · #helpTo reset your API key, open Settings › Keys and click Rotate. Old keys stop working right away.

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Act only on the items that match your own rules, and skip the rest
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Discord steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
ai_bot_that_answers_or_routes_channel_messages.pyexample
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, ai, state, report_fetched

HELP_CHANNEL = "HELP_CHANNEL_ID"
BUGS_CHANNEL = "BUGS_CHANNEL_ID"
BOT_ID = "BOT_USER_ID"

def discord(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, f"https://discord.com/api/v10{path}",
                     headers={"Authorization": f"Bot {credentials.secret('DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN')}"}, **kw)
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json() if r.content else None

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    params = {"limit": 50}
    if state.get("after"):
        params["after"] = state.get("after")
    msgs = discord("GET", f"/channels/{HELP_CHANNEL}/messages", params=params)
    report_fetched(len(msgs))
    if not msgs:
        return {"new": 0}
    state.set("after", msgs[0]["id"])
    asked = [m for m in msgs if any(u["id"] == BOT_ID for u in m["mentions"])]
    for m in asked:
        r = ai.generate(m["content"][:2000], system="Answer helpfully in under 120 words. Start with BUG: if it reports a bug.",
                        max_output_tokens=250).text
        discord("POST", f"/channels/{HELP_CHANNEL}/messages",
                json={"content": r[:2000], "message_reference": {"message_id": m["id"]}})
        if r.startswith("BUG:"):
            discord("POST", f"/channels/{BUGS_CHANNEL}/messages",
                    json={"content": f"From {m['author']['username']}: {m['content'][:1800]}"})
    return {"answered": len(asked)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does the bot answer every message or only when mentioned?
Only messages that mention the bot are handled, so it does not interrupt ordinary conversation. Members who want help simply tag it, and everything else in the channel is left alone, which keeps ordinary chat private from the bot and avoids it replying to jokes.
How fast does it reply?
It checks every five minutes, so a reply usually arrives within five minutes of the mention. That is slower than a live chatbot, which is a fair trade for not needing a hosted process, and it is plenty quick for support questions that used to wait hours for a volunteer.
Can I limit it to specific channels?
Yes. The automation reads messages from the channels you list and ignores the rest. You can also set which channels it is allowed to route requests into, such as support, bugs and ideas, and add or remove channels at any time as the server grows.
What permissions does it need?
Read Message History, Send Messages, Message Content intent. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it checks. Checks that find nothing new and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Answer questions in your help channel” from your assistant

Copy the prompt above, or connect your assistant first. Free plan, no credit card.