pm2-discord

This is a PM2 Module for sending events & logs from your PM2 processes to Discord.

Requirements

You should have pm2 installed at v6.x.x (the latest major version as of publishing this).

I've set the minimum version of Node supported to v16.0.0 to match pm2's min version of node for v6.

This might work with PM2 v5 but I can't guarantee that, use at your own risk. This version will not support for PM2 v5 or below.

Install

To install and setup pm2-discord, run the following commands:

pm2 install pm2-discord
# set required discord_url
pm2 set pm2-discord:discord_url https://your_discord_webhook_url

discord_url

To get the Discord URL, you need to setup a Webhook. More details on how to set this up can be found here: https://support.discordapp.com/hc/en-us/articles/228383668-Intro-to-Webhooks

Config

The following events can be subscribed to:

event	description	default
log	All standard out logs from your processes	true
error	All error logs from your processes	false
kill	Event fired when PM2 is killed	true
exception	Any exceptions from your processes	true
restart	Event fired when a process is restarted	false
delete	Event fired when a process is removed from PM2	false
stop	Event fired when a process is stopped	true
"restart overlimit"	Event fired when a process reaches the max amount of times it can restart	true
exit	Event fired when a process is exited	false
start	Event fired when a process is started	false
online	Event fired when a process is online	false

You can simply turn these on and off by setting them to true or false using the PM2 set command.

pm2 set pm2-discord:log true
pm2 set pm2-discord:error false
pm2 set pm2-discord:"restart overlimit" false
# etc

Options

The following options are available:

option	type	description	default
process_name	string | string[]	If set, it will only output the logs of the specified process or processes	null
buffer	boolean	Enable/Disable buffering of messages. See Buffering section below for more info	true
buffer_seconds	number	If buffer is true, how many seconds to wait between messages. Min: 1, Max: 5	1
queue_max	number	Max amount of messages allowed in the queue before flushing the queue. Min: 10, Max: 100	100
rate_limit_messages	number	Number of messages allowed within the rate limit window (defaults to Discord webhook limit)	30
rate_limit_window_seconds	number	Time window in seconds for rate limiting (defaults to Discord webhook limit)	60
format	boolean	If enabled, it wraps the message in triple backticks to format as a multi-line code block	false

Set these options in the same way you subscribe to events.

Example: The following configuration options will enable message buffering, and set the buffer duration to 2 seconds. All messages that occur within 2 seconds of each other (for the same event) will be concatenated into a single discord message.

pm2 set pm2-discord:process_name myprocess
pm2 set pm2-discord:buffer true
pm2 set pm2-discord:buffer_seconds 2
pm2 set pm2-discord:queue_max 50

Rate Limiting

This module automatically handles Discord's rate limits to prevent your webhook from being blocked. By default, it uses Discord's webhook rate limit of 30 requests per 60 seconds (0.5 requests/second).

Key Features:

• Automatic throttling to stay within Discord's limits
• Respects 429 Too Many Requests responses and backs off automatically
• Handles both route-specific and global rate limits
• Detects invalid webhooks (404) and stops sending to prevent bans
• Messages are queued and sent at a controlled rate

How it works:

1. Messages are added to a queue when they arrive
2. The queue is processed at a rate that stays within Discord's limits (default: 30 per 60 seconds)
3. If Discord returns a 429 rate limit response, the module backs off for the specified retry_after period
4. Rate limit information from Discord's response headers is tracked and respected
5. If a webhook returns 404 (deleted/invalid), the module stops attempting to send messages to prevent repeated errors

Custom Rate Limits: You can adjust the rate limits if needed (though the defaults are recommended):

pm2 set pm2-discord:rate_limit_messages 20
pm2 set pm2-discord:rate_limit_window_seconds 60

Important: The rate will never exceed Discord's webhook limit of 30 requests per 60 seconds, even if you configure higher values. This prevents your webhook from being rate-limited or banned.

Read more about Discord's rate limiting here:

• https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/6223003921559-My-Bot-is-Being-Rate-Limited
• https://discord.com/developers/docs/topics/rate-limits

Buffering

Enabling buffering allows you to reduce the amount of messages sent to Discord by waiting and concatenating messages into one.

It works like this, lets say we have an empty queue and our first message comes in:

• start a timer with buffer_seconds seconds
• if a new message comes in and the buffer_seconds timer has not expired, cancel it, add message to queue, start a new buffer_seconds timer. Repeat this until one of three things happen:
  • If no new messages come and buffer_seconds timeout expires, flush the queue
  • if the length of the queue array reaches queue_max, flush the queue and cancel all timers
  • The combined message character length would exceed the 2000 character limit for discord webhook payloads
• then we wait for new message to come in and start the process all over again

"flush the queue" means that we concatenate all messages in the queue and send it to Discord as 1 single message, and then start a new empty queue.

Debugging

You can turn on more verbose logging by setting the PM2_DISCORD_DEBUG=1 environment variable when you install the module. This is useful in debugging pm2-discord itself.

PM2_DISCORD_DEBUG=1 pm2 install pm2-discord

Contributing

In lieu of a formal style guide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code.

In development you need Node >= v20 because this project uses Node's built in Test Runner.

Acknowledgements

Forked from mattpker/pm2-slack and converted to use with Discord.