A Discord application for messaging subsets of people in a server
If for some reason you find yourself wanting to communicate with others on Discord via a dynamic network topography rather than a standard channel, then this is the app for you. Telepathy provides a backend that allows users to build out custom groups through individual connections.
There is no public live version of this application. However, if you want to use telepathy on your server you can create your own using the code from this repository.
Once the Telepathy application is added to the server, create a new network with the /setuptelepathy command. A channel with a name based on the one provided in the command will be created for each user. The new network starts off with no connections, so when visualizing it looks something like this:
To create a connection with another person, use the /bond command. For example, if Alice runs /bond Bob in her channel, the graph will look like this:
Now when Alice sends messages in her channel they will show up in Bob's channel and vice versa. Next, if Alice adds Charlie, Charlie adds Bob, Bob adds Dave, and Dave adds Eve the graph will become:
Now when Alice sends a message in her channel it goes to Bob and Charlie. When Bob sends a message it goes to Alice, Charlie, and Dave, and so on.
To see who is currently connected to you, run the listbonds command. When Dave runs /listbonds the bot returns:
Bonds: @Bob, @Eve
To remove a connection, run the unbond command. If Charlie runs /unbond Alice then /listbonds the bot will reply with:
Bonds: @Bob
When another user is bonded to you, you can also direct message them via the telepathy channel. Since Charlie is connected to Bob, they can talk to him directly by either mentioning him at the beginning of a message or by using the dm command. For example, to say "Hello," they can either type @Bob Hello or /dm @Bob Hello.
usage: /setuptelepathy [network name]
Set up private channels for each user to send telepathy messages through, along with a spectator role for the network. The network name is used to differentiate the channels and role for the created telepathy structure.
usage: /bond [user]
Add another user to your telepathy group. With the user connected, whenever you send a message in your channel they will see it in theirs. This command must be run in a telepathy channel for the connection to work.
usage: /unbond [user]
Remove a user from your telepathy group. Removed users will no longer see messages you send in your telepathy channel. This command must be run in a telepathy channel to work.
usage: /listbonds
Show a list of people who are in your telepathy group. This command must be run in a telepathy channel to work.
usage: /dm [user] [message]
To send a message only to a specific contact, you can start a message in your channel with @. However, since this is often inconvenient on discord due to users outside the channel not showing up, you can also send a direct message with the dm command. Specify the user to send the message to in the user section, and add the message to the message section. This command must be run in a telepathy channel to work.
In a web browser log in to discord and access the developer portal.
Select New Application and give it a name.
In the General Information tab you can give your application a name, a description, and a profile picture.
In the Bot tab, select Add bot. You can then add a profile picture and name for the bot.
In the token section for the bot, select Reset Token then Copy. Paste the token in a secure location and do not share it.
Next, select at least SERVER MEMBERS INTENT and MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT:
Now select OAuth2 > URL Generator to create the URL for your application.
In the scopes section select bot and applications.commands. Then in the following Bot Permissions section select Manage Roles, Manage Channels, Manage Webhooks, Send Messages, Embed Links, and Attach Files.
Now copy the link at the bottom of the page. This can be used to add your bot to a Discord server.
To run Telepathy, you will need a system that will always be online when needed that can run MySQL and nodejs.
Start by installing MySQL, either from the website or via a package manager.
Next, install NodeJS with version >= 16.9.0. nvm makes this easier to do. Then install yarn through npm
npm install -g yarn
Finally, install git on your system.
Clone the repository with the following command:
git clone https://github.com/lvoytek/telepathy.git
Enter the repository and install npm packages.
cd telepathy
yarn install
Now set up the .env file for the app. There is an example file to base it off of in the repository called .env.example.
In the token section, paste your token from the discord app page. Then choose a custom password for the password section.
If you are using a MySQL server on the same system, leave localhost as is, otherwise set MYSQL_HOST to the remote ip or site name. The MySQL user and db name can be whatever you want, just make sure to set them accordingly when building the database.
Next, build the database. Enter the mysql console then type the following commands:
mysql
> CREATE USER 'discordbot'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
> CREATE DATABASE telepathy;
> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `telepathy` . * TO 'discordbot'@'localhost';
To create the tables, run the setupdb script in the repository.
npm run setupdb
Now the app can be started with:
yarn start
If you would like to move your telepathy backend to a new server, there are some additional scripts in this repository that can be used to do so.
Access your original server, and in the telepathy directory run:
npm run exportdb
This will create the file db.json containing all relevant data from the mysql database. Copy this file to the telepathy directory of the new server.
Initialize the new server normally through the Backend Setup section, and add your token and credentials to the .env file. Then, with db.json in the directory, run:
npm run importdb
The new server should now be ready to run the existing telepathy channels again.