Discord Bot for YouTube Channel Banners

This tutorial walks through building a Discord bot that lets users run a command like /banner mrbeast and get back the channel banner, avatar, and stats as a rich embed.

What you need

Node.js 18 or newer
A Discord bot token (from discord.com/developers)
discord.js v14
The banner.yt API (no key required)

Project setup

mkdir yt-banner-bot && cd yt-banner-bot
npm init -y
npm install discord.js

index.js

const { Client, GatewayIntentBits, EmbedBuilder, SlashCommandBuilder } = require('discord.js');
const { REST, Routes } = require('discord.js');

const TOKEN = process.env.DISCORD_TOKEN;
const CLIENT_ID = process.env.CLIENT_ID;

const client = new Client({ intents: [GatewayIntentBits.Guilds] });

client.on('ready', () => {
  console.log('Bot ready as', client.user.tag);
});

client.on('interactionCreate', async (interaction) => {
  if (!interaction.isChatInputCommand()) return;
  if (interaction.commandName !== 'banner') return;

  const query = interaction.options.getString('channel');
  await interaction.deferReply();

  try {
    // Search for the channel first
    const searchRes = await fetch(
      `https://banner.yt/api/search?q=${encodeURIComponent(query)}`
    );
    const { results } = await searchRes.json();

    if (!results || results.length === 0) {
      return interaction.editReply('Could not find that channel.');
    }

    const topResult = results[0];
    const { channelId, title } = topResult;

    // Get full channel data
    const channelRes = await fetch(`https://banner.yt/api/channel/${channelId}`);
    const channel = await channelRes.json();

    const bannerUrl = `https://banner.yt/api/banner/${channelId}?format=jpeg`;
    const avatarUrl = `https://banner.yt/api/banner/${channelId}?type=avatar&format=jpeg`;

    const embed = new EmbedBuilder()
      .setTitle(channel.title || title)
      .setURL(`https://www.youtube.com/channel/${channelId}`)
      .setDescription(channel.description?.slice(0, 100) || '')
      .setImage(bannerUrl)
      .setThumbnail(avatarUrl)
      .addFields(
        { name: 'Subscribers', value: formatNumber(channel.subscriberCount), inline: true },
        { name: 'Total Views', value: formatNumber(channel.viewCount), inline: true },
        { name: 'Channel ID', value: channelId, inline: false },
      )
      .setColor(0xFF0000)
      .setFooter({ text: 'banner.yt' });

    await interaction.editReply({ embeds: [embed] });
  } catch (err) {
    await interaction.editReply('Something went wrong, try again.');
  }
});

function formatNumber(n) {
  if (!n) return 'N/A';
  const num = parseInt(n, 10);
  if (num >= 1_000_000) return (num / 1_000_000).toFixed(1) + 'M';
  if (num >= 1_000) return (num / 1_000).toFixed(1) + 'K';
  return num.toString();
}

// Register slash command
const commands = [
  new SlashCommandBuilder()
    .setName('banner')
    .setDescription('Get a YouTube channel banner')
    .addStringOption(opt =>
      opt.setName('channel').setDescription('Channel name or ID').setRequired(true)
    ),
].map(c => c.toJSON());

const rest = new REST().setToken(TOKEN);
rest.put(Routes.applicationCommands(CLIENT_ID), { body: commands })
  .then(() => console.log('Commands registered'))
  .catch(console.error);

client.login(TOKEN);

Running the bot

DISCORD_TOKEN=your_token CLIENT_ID=your_client_id node index.js

Now any server member can type /banner MrBeast and the bot will reply with the banner image, avatar, subscriber count, and view count in a clean embed.

Add more commands

You can extend this to add a /avatar command, a /stats command for just the numbers, or even a /compare command that shows two channels side by side.