Six steps to your first apply:

1. Invite the bot to a server you manage. Go to Servers (top nav). Servers where you have Manage Server but the bot isn't present yet show an + Invite bot button. Servers the bot is already in show under Ready.
2. Move Packet's role to the top of your roles list. In Discord, open Server Settings → Roles and drag the role named Packet (created when you invited the bot) above every other role. Discord won't let a bot change roles above its own, so this is the most common first-run blocker. Doing it now skips a likely error later.
3. Open a Ready server. That takes you to its Status page, which holds a first-time setup checklist.
4. Get a starting blueprint. Pick a Template (five starter servers and five add-ons), pull the server's current setup in as a blueprint, have any AI draft one on the AI Blueprint page, or write one from scratch. Then turn on what you need in Configure, which is laid out like the Guide, with a search box to find any section.
5. Check the plan. The Plan page lists exactly what would change, every role, channel, permission and setting, and opens on a plain-language summary of what gets created, renamed, moved, edited, or removed. Nothing has touched your server yet.
6. Apply. Packet snapshots your server first, then makes the changes and streams progress live. If it looks wrong afterwards, restore the snapshot. On a server's first run, pulling the current setup and applying it unchanged is a good warm-up. The plan should show roughly zero changes, which confirms the bot can read and write everything it should.

If your first apply errors

Two common first-run blockers, both fixable in under a minute:

• Bot's role isn't high enough in the roles list. Server Settings → Roles. Drag the Packet role above every role your blueprint touches (the top of the list is the safe default). Discord won't let a bot change roles above its own, so this is the most common first-time failure if step 2 above was skipped.
• Bot is missing Administrator (or one of the permissions it needs for what your blueprint touches). The invite link grants Administrator by default. If you've trimmed it, re-invite the bot or restore the permission. Packet's pre-apply check names the exact permission it needs.

Packet checks your server for the most common problems before any change touches it, so a failed apply usually means "fix one of these and re-apply" rather than "your server is half-broken." And the snapshot taken at the start is always there to restore from.

Getting around

The path: Sign in → About (you're here) → Servers → pick a server → its Status page. From there the server's menu reaches Blueprint, Configure, Plan, Apply, and every other page for that server.

• Servers: every server you can manage. Invite the bot from here.
• Guide: how to set up every feature, one page each.
• AI Blueprint: a copy-pasteable prompt for having any AI chat draft a blueprint.
• About / Roadmap / Changelog: what Packet is, what's planned, what changed.
• Commands: every Packet slash command, what it does, and who can run it.
• Feedback: report bugs or request features. You'll see replies here and by Discord DM.
• Settings (top-right menu): appearance, plus Privacy & data, where you download or permanently delete the personal data Packet holds about you.

The core flow, in one line: Template → (use) → Blueprint → (apply) → Live server → (auto-snapshot taken first) → Snapshot.

Plus a few side paths once you have something worth keeping:

• A blueprint can be imported into another server you manage (a clean copy that doesn't share identity with the source).
• A blueprint can be saved as a template so the same setup works on new servers later.
• A snapshot can be restored as a blueprint if you want to revive a past state for editing without pushing it live right away.
• A snapshot can also be saved as a template if a particular past state is worth keeping as a starting point.

The short version: blueprints are the thing you author and apply. Snapshots are automatic backups. Templates are good starting points that don't get edited in place.

Run your community

• Give members self-serve roles. Post a message where members click buttons or a dropdown to add and remove their own roles, give new members a starter role on join, offer a palette of name colors (or let them pick a custom one), give a role while someone's playing a game or listening to Spotify, and give one while someone sits in a voice channel.
• Check new members at the door. New members press Verify, answer a short question, or wait for staff to let them in before they get your join roles. Packet never kicks anyone on its own.
• Shape the way in. Build Discord's "Customize Your Server" wizard: the questions a new member answers on arrival, where each answer grants roles and unlocks the channels that go with them. Choose where everyone lands first, then set the invite welcome screen and the embeddable server widget to match. (Discord asks you to switch Community on before the wizard is available.)
• Welcome, schedule, and engage. Greet members when they join (with goodbye and ban notices too), thank members who boost, pin a welcome panel, send a welcome DM, schedule recurring announcements, post a question of the day, and run community polls on a forum, all with rich embed cards and variables like the member's name and your member count. The Guide covers every option.
• Post when your members are around. Tell Packet when your members are around, and the posts it makes on a timer wait for those hours instead of pinging people at night. Prizes and rewards never wait.
• Announce go-lives and new content. Watch your favorite creators (or your own channels) and post a rich alert the moment they go live or drop new content on Twitch, YouTube, Kick, Steam, Bluesky, and more, with an optional "🔴 Live" role while they stream.
• Show a live status card for your game server. Give Packet the address and port, pick the game, and name the channels to post in. The card carries players online, the map, and a copy-ready connect address, and Packet re-checks on a timer and edits the same message in place. When it can't reach the server, the card says so plainly rather than showing a made-up zero.
• Open voice rooms on demand. Point Packet at a hub channel and it opens rooms as they're needed: a numbered set that always keeps one free room spare, or join-to-create personal rooms whose owner gets a control panel to rename, lock, set a limit, permit someone in, or hand the room over. Empty rooms clean themselves up.
• Help members find a group. A board lists the voice rooms that have space right now, members press one button to say they're looking, and /lfg shows the same list privately.
• Show a live count in your channel list. A channel at the top of your list can show your member count, your boosters, the players on your game server, and more.
• See who invited whom. Packet shows which invite brought each member in, ranks your top inviters, can reward them with a role, and alerts staff when one invite brings in a burst of joins.
• Run giveaways, events and applications. Start giveaways members enter with one press, keep your events listed in Discord's Events tab with sign-ups and teams, and take applications with a form and an Apply button that staff accept or deny.
• Celebrate birthdays and set reminders. Members save their birthday (month and day only) for a post and a birthday role on the day, and /remind lets them ask Packet to remind them of something later.
• Make your own slash commands. Write commands for your server that answer with your text or an embed, give or take a role, or reply when a message says your phrase.
• Put busy channels on autopilot. Packet can publish, react to or open a thread on each new message in a channel, keep a sticky message at the bottom, and delete messages a set time after they are sent. Members can mark themselves away with /afk.
• Add a swear jar. List the words and pick the channels, and Packet keeps a count for each member, with an optional small fine in your server's own currency.
• Reward the members who show up. Messages and time in voice earn XP and levels, with roles handed out at the levels you pick and a self-updating leaderboard in any channel. Add coins, a spendable currency earned the same way and topped up by a daily claim that grows the longer a member keeps their streak, then stock a shop, set server goals members save toward together, and let staff hand out awards with /award.
• Open the Arcade. Coinflip, slots, roulette, blackjack, mines and more, each switched off until you turn it on and all sharing one set of wager limits. House games live under /casino, the cash-out games under /climb, and games with nothing staked under /party. Trivia earns instead of wagering, duels stake two members against each other, and the house takes no cut. House games feed one growing prize fund, won outright by a top result on the slots, the spinner, or a scratch card, and the same fund pays a scheduled tournament and a ticketed lottery draw.
• Share one economy across servers. On Packet's shared economy a member's Coins and level go with them from server to server, while your server keeps its own levels, leaderboards and currency.
• Count votes for Packet. Members vote with /vote and claim coins for it, and a vote board can show who voted for Packet in the past day, naming only the members who chose to be named.
• Get Packet's own updates. Opt in to receive Packet's announcements, new features and fixes, in a channel you choose.

Keep it safe

• Moderate with memory. Warn, mute, kick, and ban from /mod with a real case history and an escalation ladder, and Discord's own actions and AutoMod hits feed the same record, so repeat offenders escalate even when no staff are online. Staff can also right-click a member, isolate them, lock one channel, or freeze the whole server in an emergency, and you can let members report a message to staff.
• Stop spam and scams. Turn on scam-link blocking, message filters, flood guard, automatic slow-mode, spam watch and a honeypot channel. None of them bans, kicks or deletes a member, and each one ends on its own or when a staff member ends it. Manage Discord's native AutoMod filters from your blueprint too.
• Watch for raids. Raid protection tells you the moment an account deletes channels, roles or members too fast, or a flood of new accounts joins. The Safety page lists every incident and walks you through getting the server back. Only the server owner can turn it on.
• Keep your ban list. The Bans page keeps copies of your ban list, so bans a raid lifted can be put back, and the owner can back up the roles members hold.
• Run a support desk. A one-click panel opens a private, staff-only help room, and Packet writes the permissions so a ticket can't leak. Claim, close, and triage tickets from Discord or the dashboard, across every server you manage.
• Keep a log of what happens. Mirror joins, leaves, role changes, bans, and edits to a log channel and a dashboard activity feed, so you always have a record of who did what.
• Get a weekly staff digest. Once a week Packet posts one summary in a staff channel: how many members joined and left, applies, tickets, and who earned the most.
• Maintain the essentials. Keep roles ordered by purpose with role bands, restore members' roles when they rejoin, grant roles that expire on their own, point Discord's rules, community-updates, and safety-alerts designations at the channels that should hold them, and back up your server's structure and Packet's settings on a schedule.

Build and apply

• Edit visually in Configure. Rename, add, remove, and drag to reorder roles, channels, and categories, set per-role permissions and per-channel overrides point-and-click, and name a set of permissions once as a preset to reuse on any role or channel. A "Pending changes" panel shows in plain English what your edits will do before you save.
• Author blueprints directly in the Blueprint editor, with autocomplete, inline validation, saved snippets, and a Reference sidebar with examples and common pitfalls for every field.
• Generate a starter with AI. The AI Blueprint page gives you a copy-pasteable prompt to build a server from scratch or to edit a blueprint you already have. The Compact prompt fits a free AI plan, and a prompt in steps splits it into short parts. Packet itself never sends anything to an AI: you choose the chat and do the pasting.
• Pull a live server into a blueprint. Take the setup of a server you already run, edit it on the dashboard, and apply the changes back. Pulls come back grouped under categories, with permission inheritance recognized and Discord defaults left out so the blueprint is readable.
• Restructure without losing message history. Rename channels, reorganize categories, or swap layouts. The Migrate panel pairs blueprint entries to live channels by id, so Packet renames and moves instead of deleting and recreating. Message history stays intact.
• Plan before committing. The Plan page opens on a plain-language summary of what gets created, renamed, moved, edited, reordered, or removed, backed by every setting that will change, old to new. Nothing happens until you click Apply, and deleting a channel with messages in it needs a typed confirmation.
• Auto-snapshot before every apply. Even if something goes wrong, you can restore the snapshot from right before the change.
• Watch every apply stream live. Operation-by-operation progress as it runs, so you can watch a 50-channel reorganization happen in real time.
• Work on a private draft. Save a draft only you can see, then publish it as the server's blueprint when it's ready.
• Apply on a schedule. Arm a blueprint to apply on its own, on a schedule, when a goal is reached, or when pressed in Discord. If a scheduled apply would ever do more than you agreed to, Packet pauses it and waits for you.
• Catch changes made in Discord. The Changes in Discord page shows what changed on the server since your last apply, so you can keep what you want in a new draft.
• Save and reuse templates. Start from one of Packet's ten templates, or turn a working setup into your own starter for other servers or for a look you cycle back to, like a seasonal or holiday layout. Rename or delete yours from the dashboard.
• Work from Discord too. Staff can run the same flow with /architect: plan, apply, take a backup, or check a blueprint with /architect validate. The Commands reference lists every slash command, what it does, and who can run it.

Your dashboard and your data

• See how your server is doing. The Analytics page charts your member count, joins and leaves per day, activity and retention.
• Decide who can do what. On the Access page the server owner can limit each Packet power to themselves or to chosen roles.
• Keep posts ready to go. The Posts page keeps giveaways, announcements and polls you save once, to post now, schedule, or repeat.
• Keep an image library. Upload an image once on the Images page and use it in Configure for emoji, stickers and role icons.
• Control your own data. /privacy shows everything Packet keeps about you, with every switch you have. From Settings → Privacy & data you can download a copy of the personal data Packet holds about you, or permanently delete it. A Privacy Policy and Terms of Service are published in the site footer.

What you can do in a server depends on your Discord permissions there, unless the server owner narrows it on the Access page:

• Manage Channels: see the server on the dashboard, with its blueprints, snapshots, plans and recent applies.
• Manage Server: edit blueprints and templates.
• Administrator (or you're the server owner): apply changes and run schedules, delete blueprints and snapshots, and read tickets on the dashboard.
• The server owner: the Access page itself. The owner can limit each power to themselves or to chosen roles, and for some powers let chosen roles in too.

Staff commands in Discord follow each command's own permission, like Timeout Members for /mod warn. If you don't see something you expect, or a button turns you away, that's the cause: your role in that server doesn't have the permission Packet needs.

• Guide: one page for every feature, with the steps to set it up.
• AI Blueprint: have any AI draft a starter blueprint from a plain-English description.
• Commands: the full slash-command reference, what each does and who can run it.
• Roadmap: what's live today and what's planned.
• Changelog: what's new.
• Feedback: bug reports and feature requests go here.
• Inside the editor: every Blueprint page has a Reference sidebar that explains each field with worked examples and gotchas.