Introduction

cordless is a Python framework for building Discord bots that run on AWS Lambda — no server, no process to keep alive, just a function that wakes up when Discord sends an interaction.

How it works

Discord sends a POST request to your bot’s URL every time a user runs a command or clicks a button. With cordless, that URL is an API Gateway endpoint backed by a Lambda function. The function wakes up, handles the interaction, and goes back to sleep.

For interactions that take longer than Discord’s 3-second response window, cordless automatically invokes a second “worker” Lambda asynchronously and keeps the user’s message updated as work completes.

Why Lambda

• No idle cost — you pay only when interactions happen
• No ops — no EC2, no containers, no uptime monitoring
• Scales automatically — handles one interaction or ten thousand

Project structure

A typical cordless bot looks like this:

my-bot/
├── lambda_function.py   # entrypoint
├── cogs/
│   └── hello.py         # command handlers
└── cordless.toml        # deploy config