Communications
The board has one logical inbox (a Discord channel called #to-dta-board) that receives messages from three different sources, and offers a reply flow that lets a board member respond without leaving Discord.
The three input sources
Section titled “The three input sources”Anyone can email info@faydta.com. The message:
- Lands in our admin portal’s Inbox (a record kept in the database for the next 3+ years)
- Triggers a notification in the board’s
#to-dta-boardDiscord channel - Filters out the noise — out-of-office replies, bounce notifications, and email-marketing automation never get through to the human channel
2. Web contact form at faydta.com/contact
Section titled “2. Web contact form at faydta.com/contact”A short form on the website: name, email, topic, message. Submissions:
- Go into the same Inbox as real emails (treated identically downstream)
- Trigger the same Discord notification
- Get rate-limited per IP (5 submissions/hour) and screened for obvious link spam
The submitter sees a confirmation page promising a reply within a few days.
3. /board slash command on Discord
Section titled “3. /board slash command on Discord”A member running /board <message> (from any channel or directly DMing the bot) sends a message into #to-dta-board. The post includes:
- The sender’s Discord display name + tier (board / member / verified)
- A “Reply via DM” button (the board can respond and the original sender gets a DM back from the bot)
The reply flow
Section titled “The reply flow”When a board member clicks the “✉️ Reply” button on any of those notifications, a modal opens to type the response. After submitting, a private preview appears with three buttons:
- ✓ Send — sends as-typed
- ✨ Polish with AI — fixes spelling, grammar, and tone (without changing meaning) using Mistral AI’s
ministral-3b-latestmodel - Cancel — discards the draft
If Polish is clicked, the preview updates in place with the cleaned version. The board can then choose [Send polished] or [Use original]. Once sent:
- For email replies — goes out as an outbound email through our email infrastructure, with
Reply-To: info@faydta.comso future replies route back through the same loop - For
/boardreplies — the bot DMs the original sender directly
Every reply is logged in the admin Inbox with a note showing who replied, when, and whether AI polish was used.
Why we built it this way
Section titled “Why we built it this way”A volunteer board’s biggest enemy is context-switching. Email demands a separate app, a separate workflow, separate fatigue. By routing everything to one Discord channel:
- Board members see new messages on their phone immediately
- Reading the preview takes seconds, not a context switch
- The reply happens in the same place — no opening another app
- The admin portal still has the canonical record for anyone who needs the full history
For other boards
Section titled “For other boards”The pattern is reproducible:
- Pick one communication channel where board members already are
- Push everything into that channel (with filtering for noise)
- Build reply affordances IN that channel — don’t make people leave it
- Keep the canonical record somewhere else (database, CRM, spreadsheet) so the audit trail survives platform changes
The specific tools we use (Discord, Cloudflare Workers, Mistral) are not the point. The pattern would work with Slack, Microsoft Teams, or a custom dashboard.
What we don’t do
Section titled “What we don’t do”- Auto-reply to anything. Every reply is written by a human (with optional AI polish).
- Send messages on a board member’s behalf without their explicit click on Send.
- Store the content of replies in our database — only the metadata (who replied, when, whether polished). The actual reply text lives in the outbound email (or Discord DM) and the sender’s inbox.