Claude Code AFK Agent: Run Discord-Backed Autonomous Workers via Teams Plugin

A Reddit post details how to configure Claude Code to run as an AFK agentic system — reading Discord messages, spawning a single worker teammate per task, and reporting results — all without hitting programmatic API limits. The setup uses the official channels plugin and the built-in teams agent.

Setup

Enable the teams agent with environment variable:

CLAUDE_CODE_EXPERIMENTAL_AGENT_TEAMS=1

Install and configure the official channels plugin:

/plugin marketplace add anthropics/claude-plugins-official
/plugin install discord@claude-plugins-official
/reload-plugins

Discord channel docs are available from Anthropic. Create a bot, add it to the channel, and assign the required permissions.

CLAUDE.md — Lead Agent Behavior

The provided CLAUDE.md defines the lead agent's role. Key rules:

• Lead does not do work. It listens, dispatches, and reports. If it starts reading files or running commands, it must stop and delegate.
• Never spawn more than one worker. Queue additional tasks on the shared task list instead.
• Acknowledge every Discord message immediately. React with emoji (👀, ✅, 🤔, ⏸, ❌) and reply with a one-liner stating the next action.
• Post status updates with a glyph (starting, working, done, blocked, error), one line of context, and numbers if relevant.
• Interpret terse messages liberally. Resolve references against the task list and recent channel context. If ambiguous, ask one short question.

Failure Handling

• If a worker stops responding, check the shared task list and mailbox. If both stale, ask the worker to shut down, then spawn a replacement with a resume-from-last-checkpoint instruction.
• Worker silent for over an hour on a single message: force shutdown. Post ⚠️ worker silent 60m, force-shutting down to Discord, terminate the teammate, and ask the user whether to respawn or abandon.
• If the lead drifts into doing work, delete partial output and spawn a worker to do it properly.
• If multiple requests queue up, post the queue to Discord so the user can reorder.

Who It's For

Developers who want a persistent, Discord-controlled agent that runs autonomously without exceeding programmatic rate limits.