Message designs

A message design is a reusable message that you build visually and send from Reply, Send Message, Send DM or Update Message. Each design is one file in the messages/ folder, like messages/welcome.message.json.

Creating a design

Use + in the Project panel and pick Message. The name is how blocks find the design, and / creates folders: tickets/open lives at messages/tickets/open.message.json.

The editor shows a form on the left and a Discord-style preview on the right. Code switches to the JSON file, which has autocomplete and validation. Undo and redo work as in flows.

To send a design, select a Reply or Send Message block and pick it under Message design. When a design is picked, the block’s own text is ignored.

Two formats

Pick the format at the top of the editor. You can switch at any time: Makecord converts what it can, and undo brings back the original.

Classic

The format Discord has always had:

• Text up to 2000 characters.
• Up to 10 embeds, each with a color, author, title and link, description, up to 25 fields, thumbnail, image, footer and timestamp.
• Up to 5 rows of components. A row holds up to 5 buttons or a single menu.

Components V2

Discord’s newer layout system. The message is a stack of blocks:

Block	What it is
Text	Markdown text, including # headings and -# small text
Container	A box with an accent color that groups other blocks
Section	Up to 3 texts with a button or a thumbnail next to them
Gallery	1 to 10 images in a grid
Separator	Space between blocks, with or without a line
Buttons	A row of up to 5 buttons, or a menu

A Components V2 message can’t have plain text or embeds outside these blocks, and holds up to 40 components in total. The editor counts them for you.

Variables

Every text in a design can use variables, like {{user.displayName}} or {{vars.score}}. They’re filled in when the block sends the message, so a design can show values computed earlier in the flow. The preview shows them as highlighted names.

Image URLs can be variables too, such as {{user.avatar}} for a thumbnail.

Buttons and menus

Every button (except link buttons) and every menu has a custom ID. When someone uses it, Discord tells the bot, and the event flow with a matching custom ID runs:

1. Add a button with the custom ID vote:pizza to a design.
2. Create an event flow for When a button is clicked with the custom ID vote:*.
3. In that flow, {{customId}} is vote:pizza, and Update Message can redraw the message with new numbers.

The Problems panel warns about buttons and menus that no flow handles.

Menu options are written one per line as Label | value | description. The picked values arrive in the flow as {{value}} (the first) and {{values}} (all of them).

Not

Discord gives the bot 3 seconds to answer a click. Put Defer Reply first when the flow does something slow.

The file format

messages/welcome.message.json

{
  "specVersion": 1,
  "kind": "componentsV2",
  "components": [
    {
      "type": "container",
      "accentColor": "#5865f2",
      "components": [
        { "type": "text", "content": "## Welcome {{user.displayName}}" },
        {
          "type": "row",
          "components": [
            { "type": "button", "style": "success", "label": "Get roles", "customId": "roles:open" }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Classic designs use "kind": "classic" with content, embeds and components.