Interactions

There are two different ’types’ of events that you will encounter when using inventor, those being interactions and standard events. For example, the slash command trigger is an interaction event, while the message sent trigger is a standard event.

Interactions#

A slash command (interaction) can be thought of as the user starting a conversation with your bot. Your bot is expected to respond to them (like you would in a conversation) within 3 seconds through a reply to interaction block. If the user doesn’t get a response within that time period, they are left without a reply and get an error. They started a conversation with your bot and got ignored.

Standard Events#

A message sent trigger (standard event), however, is like your bot overhearing someone saying something. You can choose to interject, especially if you think that the message is intended for you (via a prefix or otherwise), but you’re really just listening in and will receive all messages.

When you respond to a message sent trigger based on a prefix or other indicator in message content, you use a standard Send Message block rather than an Interaction reply block, because there was no explicit action from the user.

The user did not explicitly interact with your bot, instead your bot sent a message by itself after seeing a user send a message. Your bot may not even send a message - it can just silently complete an action. It is worth noting that because the user did not explicitly interact with your bot, you cannot use ephemeral messages.