Interactions & commands overview

Status Stable · Last verified 2026-07-11 · API v10 · Sources Interactions overview, Receiving & responding, Application commands

An interaction is any moment a user invokes your app: running a command, clicking a button, choosing from a select menu, or submitting a modal. Interactions are the modern, first-class way to build app UX — they replaced ad-hoc “prefix commands” that scraped message text (which now also require the privileged MESSAGE_CONTENT intent — see Intents).

In this section

Page	What it covers
Interaction lifecycle	The 5 interaction types, the 3-second ACK, deferral, the 15-minute token
Signature verification	The Ed25519 flow for HTTP endpoints, step by step, with pitfalls
Slash commands	Command types, options, autocomplete, localization, registration
Components: buttons, selects, modals	Interactive components and Components V2
Responses & follow-ups	Response types, ephemeral, editing, follow-up messages
Security pitfalls	The mistakes that break or expose interaction apps

The command types

Type	Value	How the user triggers it	Example
Slash command (CHAT_INPUT)	1	Types /name with typed options/autocomplete	/ban user:@x reason:"spam"
User command (USER)	2	Right-clicks a user → Apps	“Show avatar”
Message command (MESSAGE)	3	Right-clicks a message → Apps	“Report”, “Translate”

Commands can be global (all installs) or guild-scoped (one server, updates instantly — ideal for development). Full detail: Slash commands.

Components (interactive UI)

Beyond commands, messages carry interactive components — buttons, select menus (string/user/role/mentionable/channel), and pop-up modals. Discord’s Components V2 system (opt-in per message via the IS_COMPONENTS_V2 flag, 1 << 15) additionally lets you compose the whole message from components instead of content + embeds. See Components.

Two ways to receive interactions

	HTTP Interactions Endpoint	Gateway
Transport	Discord POSTs to your URL	Delivered as gateway events
Hosting	Serverless-friendly, stateless	Needs a persistent socket
Must verify Ed25519 signature	Yes (mandatory)	No (already authenticated)
Good when	You don’t want an always-on process	You already run a bot for events

The endpoint path runs on Workers/Lambda/Vercel with no socket — but you must verify every request’s signature (details). Runnable: interaction-endpoint (HTTP) and bot-gateway-minimal (gateway).

Registering commands (quick reference)

Commands are created via REST, not the portal — usually once at deploy time. Guild-scoped updates are instant; global ones take time to propagate:

# Bulk-overwrite this app's guild commands (instant during development):
curl -X PUT \
  "https://discord.com/api/v10/applications/$DISCORD_APPLICATION_ID/guilds/$DISCORD_TEST_GUILD_ID/commands" \
  -H "Authorization: Bot $DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '[{ "name": "ping", "description": "Replies with pong", "type": 1 }]'

Swap /guilds/{id}/commands for /commands to register globally. More: Slash commands → registration.

Next

Start with the interaction lifecycle — the timing rules underpin everything else.