Every 4 hours from 9:00 to 21:00: questions in your Discord help channels with no reply after 4 hours, each with a link straight to it.
Reads
You get
The card on the right is a sample. Yours shows your own numbers and updates in place every run.
What lands on your board
Who answers these 6 questions?
6 questions in #help and #api-questions have had no reply for over 4 hours. The oldest, about webhook retries, has waited 11 hours.
In a busy Discord server, a question asked at 10 scrolls out of sight by noon. The person who asked waits, sees other people chatting, and decides nobody cares. Founders and community or support leads feel it as churn they never see.
The agent reads your help channels and forum posts, spots the messages that ask something, and checks whether anyone other than the asker replied. Questions still unanswered after 4 hours land on the card with a jump link, so whoever picks it up lands right on the message.
Call GET /channels/{channel.id}/messages?limit=100 for each help channel, paging back with before to 24 hours ago. For forum channels, each post is a thread: list them with GET /guilds/{guild.id}/threads/active, keep those whose parent_id is the forum, and read each thread the same way.
Keep messages from people outside your team (by user ID) that ask something: a question mark, or openers like "how do I", "is there", "anyone know". Skip messages with author.bot set.
A question is answered when someone else replied to it (message_reference.message_id points at it), replied in the thread it started, or mentioned the asker in the next messages. Unanswered questions older than 4 hours make the list, oldest first.
Give each question its channel, asker, wait and a link in the form https://discord.com/channels/{guild_id}/{channel_id}/{message_id}. Keep the IDs of listed questions so the next run can drop the ones answered since.
With BRIEFKIN_TOKEN set, the agent sends the result as one card that updates in place every run. Without it, you get the report in the chat.
Pick your agent, where the data comes from and how to schedule it; the commands below follow.
One command. It puts the SKILL.md in ~/.claude/skills and in ~/.agents/skills, which Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI and OpenCode read too.
shellcurl -fsSL https://briefkin.dev/skills/discord-unanswered-questions/install | shAsk Claude Code:
promptRun the discord-unanswered-questions skillOr paste the prompt instead of installing:
promptUsing the Discord API with my bot token, read the last 24 hours of messages in channels <channel IDs> (and the active threads of any forum channel). Find messages from people outside my team (<user IDs>) that ask a question, and keep those with no reply from anyone else after 4 hours: no reply referencing them, no answer in their thread, no mention of the asker afterwards. List them oldest first with channel, author, wait time and a jump link, then ask me who should answer. Do not post anything in Discord.Every 4 hours, 9:00 to 21:00, from cron on any machine where Claude Code is signed in:
crontab0 9-21/4 * * * claude -p "Run the discord-unanswered-questions skill"Add it with crontab -e. A laptop asleep at that time runs it when it wakes if you use launchd or Task Scheduler instead; GitHub Actions works for the API route.
Connect Briefkin once with curl -fsSL https://briefkin.dev/install | sh and every run lands on your board as a question for you. How setup works
SKILL.md---
name: discord-unanswered-questions
description: "Every 4 hours from 9:00 to 21:00: questions in your Discord help channels with no reply after 4 hours, each with a link straight to it. Use when the user asks for this, or when it runs on a schedule."
---
# Discord unanswered questions
Every 4 hours from 9:00 to 21:00: questions in your Discord help channels with no reply after 4 hours, each with a link straight to it.
In a busy Discord server, a question asked at 10 scrolls out of sight by noon. The person who asked waits, sees other people chatting, and decides nobody cares. Founders and community or support leads feel it as churn they never see.
The agent reads your help channels and forum posts, spots the messages that ask something, and checks whether anyone other than the asker replied. Questions still unanswered after 4 hours land on the card with a jump link, so whoever picks it up lands right on the message.
## Two ways to get the data
Use the API or MCP route when you have an MCP server, a CLI or an API token for the app. Otherwise, if you can drive a browser the user is signed in to (Claude in Chrome, a Playwright or Chrome DevTools MCP server), use the browser route. Say which one you used.
## Route A: API or MCP server
### What you need
- A Discord bot in your server with View Channel and Read Message History on the help channels, its token in `DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN`, and the Message Content intent switched on in the Developer Portal. The bot only reads.
- The channel IDs to watch, and the user IDs of your team so their replies count as answers.
If something is missing, say what and stop; do not invent numbers.
### Steps
1. **Read the help channels** (Discord): Call `GET /channels/{channel.id}/messages?limit=100` for each help channel, paging back with `before` to 24 hours ago. For forum channels, each post is a thread: list them with `GET /guilds/{guild.id}/threads/active`, keep those whose `parent_id` is the forum, and read each thread the same way.
2. **Spot the questions**: Keep messages from people outside your team (by user ID) that ask something: a question mark, or openers like "how do I", "is there", "anyone know". Skip messages with `author.bot` set.
3. **Check for an answer**: A question is answered when someone else replied to it (`message_reference.message_id` points at it), replied in the thread it started, or mentioned the asker in the next messages. Unanswered questions older than 4 hours make the list, oldest first.
4. **Post with jump links**: Give each question its channel, asker, wait and a link in the form `https://discord.com/channels/{guild_id}/{channel_id}/{message_id}`. Keep the IDs of listed questions so the next run can drop the ones answered since.
## Route B: the browser
### What you need
- Signed in to Discord in the browser with an account that is a member of the server and can read the help channels and forums; no bot or server permission is needed.
If something is missing, say what and stop; do not invent numbers.
### Steps
Start at https://discord.com/app. The user is signed in already; never type passwords or codes, and ask if a sign-in page appears.
1. **Open the server and the first help channel**: The web app opens on your last server; pick yours in the left rail and open the first help channel. Scroll up until the messages are older than 24 hours.
2. **Spot the questions**: Read down from there and note every message from someone outside the team that asks something: a question mark, or an opener such as "how do I" or "anyone know". Skip messages tagged **BOT** or **APP**.
3. **Check for an answer**: A question is answered when a later message shows the "replying to" line pointing at it, when its thread (the **x messages** link under it) has a reply from someone else, or when someone mentions the asker afterwards. Keep the unanswered ones that are more than 4 hours old.
4. **Do the forum channels**: Open each forum channel, sort by **Creation Date**, and open posts created in the last 24 hours whose card shows no replies. A post with no message from anyone but the author after 4 hours goes on the list.
5. **Copy the links**: For each listed question, open the message's **More** menu (the three dots) and choose **Copy Message Link**. Report them oldest first with channel, author and wait, and ask who answers. Post nothing in Discord.
Note: Discord search has no filter for unanswered messages, so this route reads the channels one by one and gets slow past a few busy channels. Message links come from the Copy Message Link menu; the agent cannot see reply references any other way in the UI.
## The report
- **Unanswered questions** older than 4 hours, and the longest wait.
- **The list**, oldest first: question, channel, who asked, how long ago, and a jump link.
- The ask: who answers them.
## Post it to Briefkin
When `BRIEFKIN_TOKEN` is set, or `~/.config/briefkin/env` exists (the installer from https://briefkin.dev/docs writes it), also send the result to the user's Briefkin board as one card. Keep the `item_key` the same on every run so the card updates in place, use a new `event_id` per run, and put today's real numbers in place of the example ones. If the request fails, say so once and carry on.
```bash
[ -n "${BRIEFKIN_TOKEN:-}" ] || . ~/.config/briefkin/env
curl -sS -X POST "${BRIEFKIN_URL:-https://briefkin.dev}/v1/events" \
-H "authorization: Bearer $BRIEFKIN_TOKEN" \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d @- <<'JSON'
{
"v": 1,
"event_id": "discord-unanswered-questions/<date of this run, e.g. 2026-10-16>",
"item_key": "discord-unanswered-questions",
"project": "Acme Community",
"source": "Discord unanswered questions skill",
"kind": "action",
"title": "6 community questions unanswered for 4+ hours",
"summary": "**6 questions** in #help and #api-questions have had no reply for over 4 hours. The oldest, about webhook retries, has waited 11 hours.",
"action": {
"request": "Who answers these 6 questions?",
"options": [
"Support on-call takes all",
"Devrel takes the API ones",
"I will answer",
"Skip for now"
]
},
"widget": [
{
"type": "Table",
"props": {
"columns": [
"Question",
"Channel",
"Asked by",
"Waiting"
],
"align": [
"left",
"left",
"left",
"right"
],
"rows": [
[
"Do webhooks retry after a 500?",
"#api-questions",
"devon_k",
"11 h"
],
[
"Can I self-host the worker on ARM?",
"#help",
"mira.dev",
"9 h"
],
[
"What is the rate limit on search?",
"#api-questions",
"tjohnson",
"7 h"
],
[
"CSV import keeps timing out",
"#help",
"ana_lima",
"6 h"
],
[
"Is there a dark mode for the dashboard?",
"#help",
"kenji",
"5 h"
],
[
"How do I rotate an API key without downtime?",
"#api-questions",
"r.patel",
"4 h"
]
]
}
},
{
"type": "Links",
"props": {
"items": [
{
"label": "Webhook retries (11 h)",
"url": "https://discord.com/channels/1029384756201938475/1029384799102938475/1295510348866193408"
},
{
"label": "Self-hosting on ARM (9 h)",
"url": "https://discord.com/channels/1029384756201938475/1029384788475610293/1295522031193860096"
},
{
"label": "Search rate limit (7 h)",
"url": "https://discord.com/channels/1029384756201938475/1029384799102938475/1295552109376045056"
}
]
}
}
]
}
JSON
```
Widgets come from the Briefkin catalog (https://briefkin.dev/v1/catalog). Without a token, just give the user the report.
## Run it on a schedule
Suggested: Every 4 hours, 9:00 to 21:00 (`0 9-21/4 * * *`). From cron, with the agent signed in on that machine:
```bash
0 9-21/4 * * * claude -p "Run the discord-unanswered-questions skill"
# Codex: codex exec, Gemini CLI: gemini -p, Copilot CLI: copilot -p, OpenCode: opencode run
```
Or use the agent's own scheduler (Claude Code routines, Codex automations, Claude or ChatGPT scheduled tasks): https://briefkin.dev/skills/discord-unanswered-questions#schedule
Source: https://briefkin.dev/skills/discord-unanswered-questions
A Discord bot in your server with View Channel and Read Message History on the help channels, its token in DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, and the Message Content intent switched on in the Developer Portal. The bot only reads.
The channel IDs to watch, and the user IDs of your team so their replies count as answers.
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and send it as Authorization: Bot <token>; the skill also reads DISCORD_CHANNEL_IDS, the channels to watch.Keep the bot out of every channel the report doesn't cover with channel permission overrides, and leave out Send Messages unless you want it to post the digest back into Discord.
Without it, Discord returns empty text for messages that don't mention the bot, so it can't tell a question from a greeting. For a bot in fewer than 100 servers you switch the intent on in the Developer Portal; bots in 100 or more servers need verification and approval first.
No. The bot needs no Send Messages permission and the skill only reads. Answers come from people, through the jump links on the card.
No. The skill runs with your own agent and gives you the report in the chat. With a Briefkin token set, each run also posts it to your board as a asks you, so you can glance at it instead of asking again.
Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, OpenCode, Windsurf and Amp all read SKILL.md files. The install command puts it in ~/.claude/skills and ~/.agents/skills, where they look. ChatGPT, the Claude app and Grok take the prompt instead. Pick your agent under "Install and run it" and the commands change to match.
Yes. Switch the data source to "Your browser" and the steps change to the Discord pages themselves: the agent opens discord.com/app in a browser you are signed in to and reads the numbers off the page. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Claude app and ChatGPT can drive a browser out of the box; Gemini CLI, Copilot CLI and OpenCode need a Playwright or Chrome DevTools MCP server first. It is slower than the API and needs you signed in, so it suits a report you run by hand or from a scheduler on your own computer.
Skills are free to use with any agent. Briefkin is where their results land: one board for every report, number and question your agents send, with a ping when something needs you.
Free during the open beta. No card.