🔒 Need help telling discord.py bot to respond to "every message"

[karmic ledge]

This is my very first coding project and I'd like to write a small bot that reacts to every message sent. So far I've only been able to figure out how to respond specifically to messages that just say "word".

This is what I have so far:

import discord

class Client(discord.Client):
async def on_ready(self):
print(f'Logged on as {self.user}!')

async def on_message(self, message):
    if message.author == self.user:
        return
    
    if message.content == 'word':
        await message.add_reaction('\U0001F525')

intents = discord.Intents.default()
intents.message_content = True

client = Client(intents=intents)
client.run('token')

I've tried various ways of rewriting

if message.content == 'word':

but the only comment that I've received was that it shouldn't be an if statement if i want to include EVERY message. Since I'm completely new to all this I don't know what the alternative could be.

TIA

[crude rivet]

@karmic ledge

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[foggy bronze]

Yeah no if

Just something like await message.channel.send("whatever")

[karmic ledge]

ok i tried:

import discord

class Client(discord.Client):
async def on_ready(self):
print(f'Logged on as {self.user}!')

async def on_message(self, message):
    if message.author == self.user:
        return
    
async def on_message():
    await message.channel.send("no idea what goes here sorry")
    await message.add_reaction('\U0001F525')

intents = discord.Intents.default()
intents.message_content = True

client = Client(intents=intents)
client.run('token')

and got this error message:

2026-02-16 06:03:19 ERROR discord.client Ignoring exception in on_message
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\x\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\discord\client.py", line 504, in _run_event
await coro(*args, **kwargs)
~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
TypeError: Client.on_message() takes 0 positional arguments but 2 were given
2026-02-16 06:03:28 ERROR discord.client Ignoring exception in on_message
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\x\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\discord\client.py", line 504, in _run_event
await coro(*args, **kwargs)
~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
TypeError: Client.on_message() takes 0 positional arguments but 2 were given
2026-02-16 06:03:32 ERROR discord.client Ignoring exception in on_message
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\x\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python314\site-packages\discord\client.py", line 504, in _run_event
await coro(*args, **kwargs)
~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
TypeError: Client.on_message() takes 0 positional arguments but 2 were given

Obviously I'm wrong about what's supposed to be in the brackets, but I am also probably wrong about other things too, I just don't know how.

[foggy bronze]

You need to add the arguments back into the on_message

[foggy bronze]

The stuff in the brackets which you had before

Self and message

Oh wait you have two events

Just put it all under the same one

Or one of them won't get recognised

[karmic ledge]

i'm almost there!

import discord

class Client(discord.Client):
async def on_ready(self):
print(f'Logged on as {self.user}!')

async def on_message(self, message):
    if message.author == self.user:
        return

    await message.add_reaction('\U0001F525')

intents = discord.Intents.default()
intents.message_content = True

client = Client(intents=intents)
client.run('token')

the only problem is that the bot both reacts to the comment with the emoji and then comments the emoji as well

[granite ledge]

btw you'd most likely want to change this condition-

        if message.author == self.user:
            return

to

        if message.author.bot:
            return

this instead

It will ignore all bot messages and not just your bot

[karmic ledge]

thanks! do you have any idea what might be causing the extra reply?

[granite ledge]

can you show your updated code?

[karmic ledge]

import discord

class Client(discord.Client):
    async def on_ready(self):
        print(f'Logged on as {self.user}!')

    async def on_message(self, message):
        if message.author.bot:
            return
        await message.add_reaction('\U0001F525')

intents = discord.Intents.default()
intents.message_content = True

client = Client(intents=intents)
client.run('token')

[granite ledge]

have you saved your code before running it in your editor?

[karmic ledge]

WOW i don't know what happened because i was definitely saving but just to be sure i saved and restarted both visual studio and discord. it worked! thank you!

[crude rivet]

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