Every project starts with a question. For Pingify, mine was: what should I build?
I wanted to build something open source, something with real utility. Then one day the idea just clicked: a Discord bot that watches your feeds across every platform and pings you when something drops. No more tab-switching, no more missing posts. Discord is already where communities gather anyway.
Where it could be better
Before writing a single line of code, I did what you should always do with an idea: I looked for it.
MEE6 and YAGPDB both have notification integrations. They work well. But there were two things I felt I could do differently: the better features are either behind a paywall or is closed source. For a bot that sits in your server and monitors feeds, I think transparency matters. You should be able to see exactly what it does with your data.
I also wanted to go further on platform support. Most bots stop at YouTube and Twitch. I wanted to cover Reddit, Kick, Bluesky, X, Trovo, Odysee, and keep adding more.
So the idea wasn't completely unique, but that was fine. I wanted to go further on platform support and build a free, open source alternative that covers more of the platforms: YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Kick, Bluesky, X, Trovo, Odysee, and more over time. I just needed a name. It came from what the bot literally does: it pings you. Pingify.
Building it
The project took about three months from start to the initial open source release. I handled everything: design, architecture, and code.
The stack used:
- TypeScript throughout, frontend and backend
- Next.js for the web dashboard
- Discord.js for the bot
- MongoDB for persistent data
- Supabase for authentication
- Node.js backend connecting everything
- Various social platform APIs for the feed integrations
Getting the platform APIs working was the most tedious part. Every platform has its own rate limits, auth flows, and response formats. Normalizing all of that into a consistent internal structure took real work.
The dashboard was important to me from the start. A bot you can only configure through slash commands has its limits. A web UI makes it accessible to server owners who aren't developers.
Why open source
Being open source isn't just a checkbox. For a bot like this, it's a feature. Anyone can read the code, verify what data is stored, and see exactly how platform feeds are fetched. There's no black box.
It also means the project doesn't die if I stop actively working on it. The community can fork it, extend it, add new platform integrations, whatever they need.
Where it is now
Pingify is live. The code is public on GitHub. If you run a Discord community and you're tired of manually checking feeds across platforms, give it a shot.
And if you want to add a platform integration or fix something, PRs are open.