Building Aura: A Free Discord Music Bot with a Full Web Dashboard

Aura started as a simple music bot for my community. The goal was clear: free forever, no premium paywall, but feel as polished as paid alternatives.

The bot runs on Discord.js with Kazagumo + Lavalink for HD audio. Session control was the hardest part — whoever runs /play owns both Discord and web until they leave voice chat. That required shared state between the bot process and the API.

The web stack is Next.js on Vercel with OAuth for Discord login. Guild settings, live player controls, analytics, and playlists all sync through REST endpoints backed by Prisma and Redis.

Deployment split: bot on Discloud (24/7), web on Vercel. Env vars, domain setup, and SSO protection off for public access — lessons I now bake into every client project.