My first project with real users: a taco-themed Discord bot with trivia, a currency system, and community-requested features. It had users before it had a database, which is how I learned why persistence matters.

Why I built it

I was in middle school, liked Discord bots, and thought a taco economy was a perfectly reasonable foundation for a community. It began as a joke and became the first thing I built for strangers.

What it does

Taco Bot ran trivia, commands, a virtual currency, and features requested by the communities that installed it. At its peak it reached roughly 120–150 servers and an audience of about 100,000 members.

Why it matters

This is the project that taught me software changes when people depend on it. The earliest version stored currency in memory, so a free-host restart erased everyone’s balance. That painful mistake taught me persistence more effectively than a textbook could.

Under the hood

Python and discord.py handled commands and asynchronous Discord events.
Heroku hosted the bot during its active life.
Community feedback, persistence, and feature iteration mattered more than the original command list.