Interactions and responses¶

Slash commands, context menus, buttons, selects, and modal submissions are Discord interactions. Their first response must be sent promptly; Discord invalidates an unacknowledged interaction after roughly three seconds.

Slash-command response flow¶

bot:slash_command("slow", {
    description = "Perform deferred work",
    callback = function(ctx)
        ctx:defer()
        -- perform work without blocking the interaction acknowledgement
        ctx:edit("Finished")
    end,
})

SlashCommandContext provides:

Method	Purpose
`respond(content, opts)` / `reply(...)`	Initial channel-message response.
`defer()`	Deferred channel-message response.
`edit(content, opts)`	Edit the original interaction response.
`original_response()` / `delete_original_response()`	Fetch or delete the original response.
`send_followup(content, opts)`	Create a follow-up and return a `Message`.
`fetch_followup`, `edit_followup`, `delete_followup`	Manage a follow-up by message ID.

opts may contain ephemeral, embeds, components, and files for response methods that accept it. ephemeral = true sets the Discord ephemeral flag.

Component responses¶

A component callback receives ComponentContext. Use update to replace the message containing the component, respond to send another message, or defer to acknowledge work.

bot:interaction("refresh", function(ctx)
    ctx:update("Updated")
end)

ComponentContext:defer({ with_message = true }) uses a deferred channel-message response; without it, the method uses a deferred message-update response.

Error handling¶

Callbacks for application commands are protected by pcall; failures are emitted as application_command_error. Component callbacks are called directly by the current dispatcher. Register error handlers and make sure every interaction path either responds, updates, or defers.