Discord Integration

Discord is the primary destination type in Dispatch. Events are delivered as rich embed messages to Discord channels.

Setting Up a Discord Destination

Option 1: Manual Webhook URL

1. In Discord, go to Server Settings → Integrations → Webhooks
2. Create a new webhook and copy the URL
3. In Dispatch, go to Destinations → Create Destination
4. Select Discord as the type and paste the webhook URL

Option 2: OAuth Connection

1. Go to Destinations → Connect Discord
2. Authorize the Dispatch bot for your server
3. Select a channel
4. Dispatch creates the webhook automatically

Discord Embed Format

Dispatch delivers events as Discord webhook messages with rich embeds:

{
  "content": "",
  "username": "Dispatch",
  "avatar_url": "",
  "embeds": [
    {
      "title": "push",
      "description": "3 commits pushed to main",
      "color": 555146,
      "fields": [
        {
          "name": "Repository",
          "value": "owner/repo",
          "inline": true
        },
        {
          "name": "Branch",
          "value": "main",
          "inline": true
        }
      ],
      "footer": {
        "text": "Dispatch"
      },
      "timestamp": "2025-03-14T10:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Embed Limits

Discord enforces these limits on embed content:

Field	Max Length
Title	256 characters
Description	4096 characters
Fields	25 per embed
Field name	256 characters
Field value	1024 characters
Footer text	2048 characters
Author name	256 characters

Colors

Embed colors are specified as decimal integers. Common values:

Color	Decimal	Hex
Red	16711680	#FF0000
Green	65280	#00FF00
Blue	255	#0000FF
Aqua (Dispatch)	555146	#08788A
Purple	10181046	#9B59B6
Yellow	16776960	#FFFF00

ANSI Formatting

Discord supports ANSI color codes in code blocks. Dispatch templates provide helper functions for ANSI formatting:

{{ansiGreen "SUCCESS"}}    → Green text
{{ansiRed "ERROR"}}        → Red text
{{ansiYellow "WARNING"}}   → Yellow text
{{ansiBold "Important"}}   → Bold text

These are rendered inside Discord's ANSI code block syntax (ansi language identifier).

Rate Limiting

Discord enforces rate limits on webhook endpoints. Dispatch handles this automatically:

• Cooldown — per-destination cooldown period tracked across all delivery workers
• Retry-After — respects Discord's Retry-After header on 429 responses

If Discord returns a 429, the delivery is automatically retried after the specified cooldown period.

Security

• Webhook URLs are encrypted at rest
• URLs are only decrypted at delivery time and are never exposed in API responses or logs

Thread Support

Dispatch can deliver messages to a specific Discord thread rather than the main channel.

Destination-level thread

Set a thread on the destination itself (in Create Destination or Edit Destination). All messages delivered through that destination will be posted to the specified thread.

For destinations connected via OAuth, Dispatch shows a searchable dropdown of all active threads in your server, grouped by channel. Select the thread and the name is saved alongside the ID.

For destinations added by pasting a webhook URL directly, enter the thread ID manually. To find a thread ID in Discord, right-click the thread and select Copy Thread ID (requires Developer Mode to be enabled in Discord settings).

Per-rule thread override

You can also set a thread on individual routing rules. The rule-level thread takes precedence over the destination-level one, so you can route different event types to different threads. The same searchable picker is available on the routing page for OAuth-connected destinations.

Example:

Default thread: #deployments   (all events go here by default)

Routing rule:
  body.action = "deploy"
  → Deliver, thread: #production-deploys   (deploys go to a separate thread)