Implement a way for Slash-Commands only bots to appear online.

[Andre601]

There is the chance that Bots may only use the applications.commands scope in the OAuth Link and perform various stuff through things such as HTTP webhooks or similar.

This has the unwanted downside that the Bot account itself, which is still added to a Server, may appear as offline, causing confusion since why is the bot offline?

Idea
There should be a way, like a heartbeat endpoint for slash-commands only, to make the bot account appear active.
Perhaps Discord could send a heartbeat every now and then and the bot could respond with anything to tell Discord that it is still active, and if it is, Discord would make the account appear online, otherwise offline.

A prime-case of such stuff causing confusion are bot lists, where bots can be added with only the applications.commands scope and the reviewer thinking the bot is offline.
I've noticed this several times, but it wasn't only on bot lists, but also on random servers.

[Skye-31]

Perhaps Discord could send a heartbeat every now and then and the bot could respond with anything to tell Discord that it is still active, and if it is, Discord would make the account appear online, otherwise offline.

This could perhaps use the existing interaction type 1 ping, as it already needs to be implemented in a webhook interaction handler?

[Andre601]

I'm not that well with the API and don't know what it offers that could work.

[viral32111]

Just going to say, if your "bot" is definitely only ever going to be used for Slash Commands and you are able to receive interactions over HTTP instead of the gateway, just don't make a bot for the application.

I've done this with one of my slash command applications that runs on Cloudflare Workers and no bot appears in the member list, when the "bot" is clicked on for a slash command usage message it just shows the same popup that a webhook would show. Just name and profile picture, no roles, no nicknames, no user management, no activity, no online or offline status.

Downside of this is that if you need to make calls to the Discord API then you won't have a bot token to do that with, I got around this by using a temporary client credentials grant to create/update slash commands.

[ghost]

You need a bot account to do anything other than send messages. I'm sure many, if not most, HTTP-only slash command applications have some functionality other than storing and/or retrieving data.

[typpo]

HTTP-only bots no longer appear as offline