| name | ask-discord |
| description | Ask the user a question via Discord and wait for their reply. Use when blocked >5 minutes on a decision and the user is away from the keyboard. Times out gracefully. |
Ask the user via Discord
Use this when you are blocked on a decision and the user is plausibly away from the workstation. The bridge daemon (claude-discord-bridge) posts the question to a Discord thread tied to the current session and waits up to 15 minutes for a reply. The user's reply (or a graceful fallback string on timeout / bridge-down) is returned to you to use as conversation context.
When to use
- You've been working autonomously and hit a fork in the road that materially changes the result.
- The decision is hard to undo (data deletion, schema change, deploy, irreversible refactor).
- A code-only check (test runs, type checks) cannot answer the question.
- You'd otherwise wait or guess for >5 minutes.
When NOT to use
- The answer is in the codebase or git history — read it.
- The decision is trivial / reversible — just pick one and proceed.
- The user is at the keyboard (recent activity in this session) — the normal turn-by-turn dialog is faster.
How to invoke
Run the bridge's CLI script via the Bash tool. Pass your session ID (you received it in the session-start system reminder; the skill explicitly authorizes you to pass it to this script) and the current working directory:
python3 /home/discord/claude-discord-bridge/skills/ask_discord.py \
"<the question>" \
--session-id "<your session id>" \
--cwd "$(pwd)"
The script blocks until the user replies in Discord, the bridge times out, or the bridge is unreachable. It always exits 0 and always writes ONE human-readable line to stdout. Use that line as the user's input to the next step of your reasoning.
Examples of return strings:
yes — straight answer.
option B because C — answer with rationale.
no reply within 15m; proceeding with best-guess — timeout fallback. Make a reasonable call and continue.
bridge daemon is not reachable at http://127.0.0.1:8787; is \claude-discord-bridge serve` running?` — bridge-down. Make a reasonable call and continue. Mention the bridge issue to the user when they return.
Tone of the question
Be specific. The user is glancing at Discord on their phone. "Should I use option A or B?" — name A and B in the question itself. Two sentences max, plus a one-line "current cwd: …" so they have context.