The Ghostty Discord Bot, humorlessly named "Ghostty Bot."
It originally powered the invite system during Ghostty's private beta period, successfully inviting ~5,000 people. It now serves as the community's helper bot, making development discussion and community moderation more efficient.
For bot setup and project structure, see CONTRIBUTING.md.
/docs/close#helpchannel moderation- Entity mentions
- XKCD mentions
- Embed fixups
- Zig code blocks
- Message filters
- Moving messages
A command for linking Ghostty documentation with autocomplete and an optional message option:
If a message is provided, a webhook will be used to send the message under the interactor's server profile.
A command group to mark help channel posts as resolved, with various options for different resolution scenarios:
| Command | Applied tag | Argument | Additional information |
|---|---|---|---|
/close solved |
Solved | Config option (optional) | Links to config documentation (if option provided) |
/close wontfix |
Stale | - | Adds "WON'T FIX" to post title |
/close upstream |
Stale | - | Adds "UPSTREAM" to post title |
/close stale |
Stale | - | - |
/close moved |
Moved to GitHub | GitHub entity number | Links to the GitHub entity |
/close duplicate |
Duplicate | Help post ID/link or GitHub entity number | Links to original post or GitHub entity |
Similar to /close, posts in the #help channel are automatically
closed after one day of inactivity when they have been marked as solved using
the post tags. Information about a #help channel scan is also published in the
bot log channel.
Bumps to old solved posts (older than one month) are also handled by warning the user and locking the thread, to prevent often unrelated help requests in posts that are no longer relevant.
Automatic links to Ghostty's GitHub issues/PRs/discussions ("entities") when a
message contains GitHub-like mentions (#1234). It reacts to message edits and
deletions for 24 hours, while also providing a "❌ Delete" button for 30 seconds
in case of false positives. A "❄️ Freeze" button is also provided to stop
reacting to message edits and deletions. Mentioning entities in other
ghostty-org repos is supported with prefixes:
weborwebsitefor ghostty-org/website, e.g.web#78bot,bobr, ordiscord-botfor ghostty-org/discord-bot, e.g.bot#98mainorghosttyfor ghostty-org/ghostty (default), e.g.main#2137or just#2137
On top of that, any GitHub repository can be mentioned, either with
owner/repo#1 (e.g. astral-sh/uv#8020), or repo#1, where the bot will try
finding the most popular repo with that name (e.g. rust#105586).
A full GitHub URL (such as https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/pull/4876)
will also be responded to in a similar fashion, and the original GitHub embed
will be suppressed.
The bot also keeps a TTR cache to avoid looking up the same entity multiple times (with data being refetched 30 minutes since last use), making the bot more responsive (the example below can take ~2s on first lookup and ~5ms on subsequent lookups).
Ghostty Bot responds to GitHub code range links with code blocks containing the linked code. Same edit/delete hook and TTR cache rules apply.
Comments on issues, PRs, and discussions are displayed by the bot when linked. A subset of GitHub events (e.g. "requested review", "closed the issue", "added label") is also supported. Same edit/delete hook and TTR cache rules apply.
Ghostty Bot responds to messages containing commit hashes (such as b7913f0 or
a8b9dd8dfc7a2cd6bb3f19969a450497654a47b0) with information about the mentioned
commit. The same prefixes used for entity mentions is also supported by using an
@; e.g. bot@4841da1. Arbitrary repositories can also be mentioned with a
syntax similar to entity mentions; e.g. python/cpython@2a6888e or
zig@39aca6f37e83e263236339f9.
Similar to the above feature, entity mentions with a prefix of xkcd, such as
xkcd#1172, will be replied to with an embed containing the XKCD's contents.
Message edits and deletion are also handled, and a "❌ Delete" button is provided
for one hour. A "❄️ Freeze" button is also provided to stop reacting to message
edits and deletions.
Ghostty Bot also helpfully replies to mysterious asterisks with missing footnotes with their true destination, https://xkcd.com/2708.
Ghostty Bot automatically fixes broken or missing embeds for social media links. When a message contains a link to Reddit, X/Twitter, or Pixiv, the bot suppresses the original embed and replies with a working alternative (using rxddit, fixupx/fxtwitter, and phixiv respectively). Message edits and deletion are also handled, with the standard buttons provided.
Ghostty Bot looks for any code blocks with the language set to zig and
responds with custom ansi code blocks that contain correctly
syntax-highlighted Zig code (since Discord doesn't support Zig). Replies include
a dismiss button, plus:
- a Freeze button: stops the bot from reacting to edits/deletion of the original message (useful if the author wants to remove their unhighlighted code block but keep the bot's reply),
- a Replace my message button (for shorter messages only): deletes both the original and the bot's reply, then resends the original message via webhook as the original author, but with proper syntax highlighting.
The bot can also highlight Zig code in .zig attachments.
This feature relies on trag1c/zig-codeblocks! ^^
This feature takes care of keeping the #showcase and #media channels clean.
The bot will delete any message:
- without an attachment in
#showcase - without a link in
#media
It will also DM users about the deletion and provide an explanation to make it less confusing:
Used for moving messages to more fitting channels (e.g. off-topic questions in
#development to #tech).
Ghostty troubleshooting questions can be turned into #help posts with a
related feature:
The author of a message can also modify moved messages using an entry in the context menu, which gives them the following:
- a Delete button: removes the moved message, without any further confirmation.
- an Edit via modal button: displays a text box to them that is pre-filled with the existing message content, allowing them to modify it almost like with the normal Discord edit option.
- an Edit in thread button: creates a new private thread in the current channel, adds them to it, then provides them with instructions on how to continue. In channels that don't support private threads, this button isn't shown.
- a Help button: displays information about both editing options to them.
If the message has one attachment, a "Remove attachment" button is also shown, which removes the attachment without any further confirmation; if the message has multiple attachments, a "Remove attachments" button is shown which provides the user with a selection menu that allows them to select which attachments are to be removed.