Your server is described by a blueprint — one document covering your roles, channels, permissions, and Packet's own features. You edit it visually on the Configure page, preview exactly what will change on the Diff page, then Apply it to your live server. Nothing changes until you hit Apply, and Packet takes an automatic backup first.

1. Invite Packet and pick your server.
2. Build a blueprint — write one from scratch, generate one with AI, or pull your existing server in.
3. Configure it visually (or edit the JSON directly).
4. Diff to preview, then Apply.

Set every one of these up in the Configure editor — the section to open is noted with each — then preview the change and apply it. (You can also author any of them in the blueprint directly, or with the AI generator.)

Roles, permissions & bands

Define your role hierarchy, colors, and per-role permissions. Role bands group roles by purpose (staff, color, activity, members) and keep them ordered correctly. Packet writes channel permission overwrites for you, so private and read-only channels are correct by construction. (Configure → Roles and Role bands.)

Permission presets

Name a set of permissions once and reuse it everywhere. Build a preset — a "Moderator" set, a "Read-only" set, a "Voice only" set — from the same grouped, searchable permission picker you use on a role, give it a short description, then drop it into any role's permissions or any channel's allow/deny list instead of ticking the same twelve boxes again. Edit the preset later and every place that uses it follows, so a permission you meant your whole staff to have never ends up half-applied. (Configure → Permission presets.)

Channels & categories

Text, voice, forum, announcement, and stage channels, organized into categories — created, renamed, moved, and kept in sync. Rename anything and Packet re-points every reference automatically. (Configure → Channels.)

Community channels

Discord's Community features rely on three designated channels: the Rules channel, the Community updates channel Discord posts admin notices to, and the Safety alerts channel where raid warnings land. Point each one at a channel by name and Packet keeps the designation attached to it, so renaming, moving, or replacing that channel doesn't quietly break the pointer. All three have to be text channels, and the editor warns you if one isn't. Discord wants Community set up before announcement channels, stage channels, and the onboarding wizard below are available at all. (Configure → Community.)

The Role Caller — self-serve role pickers

A message members click to add or remove their own roles (buttons or a dropdown). Use several pickers to split menus by topic or across channels, and auto-assign roles on join. Looking for reaction roles? Same idea, without the emoji. Members click a button or pick from a dropdown instead of reacting, and one menu can offer up to 25 roles. (Configure → Role Caller.)

Color roles

Let members pick their own name color. Offer a preset palette (organized into a single-select menu, auto-split across menus if it's large), or enable custom colors so members choose any hex color via a button. (Configure → Color roles for the palette; Custom colors for the pick-your-own option.)

Activity roles

Auto-assign a hoisted role while a member is playing a game or using an app (for example, a "Playing ARK" role, or a "Listening to Spotify" role) — removed shortly after they stop, so the member list groups people by what they're doing. (Configure → Activity roles.)

Sticky roles & temporary roles

Sticky roles restore a member's roles when they rejoin. Temporary roles let staff grant a role that auto-expires, via /temprole. (Configure → Role Caller.)

The Greeter — welcome, goodbye & ban messages

Post a message when a member joins, leaves, or is banned — plain text, a rich embed card, or both. Add an optional pinned welcome panel (a kept-in-sync rules/welcome board) and an optional welcome DM. Uses variables like {user} and {memberCount}, plus {rolepicker} for a line pointing at your Role Caller menu and {reason} on a ban announcement (see Message variables below). (Configure → Greeter.)

Scheduled messages

Post a message to a channel on a schedule — every few hours, or on set days and times in your timezone (e.g. every Friday at 6pm, daylight-saving aware). Plain text or a rich embed. A Send now button posts on demand. (Configure → Scheduled messages.)

Forums & polls

Run a community-engagement loop on a forum: Packet periodically opens a poll of the top posts, announces the winner, and can run a follow-up "should we implement it?" vote. It can also post and pin a first post (rules / how-it-works), archive stale threads, and ping a role when a poll opens. Configure tags, the default reaction, and guidelines per forum. Posts here can use {forum}, and a winner announcement also gets {winner}, {votes} and {link}. (Configure → Forums.)

Onboarding

Build Discord's "Customize Your Server" wizard — the questions a member answers on the way in. Write prompts as buttons or a dropdown ("What do you play?", "What should we ping you for?"), each with options that grant roles and unlock channels when they're picked; mark a prompt required, single-select, or available later on rather than during the wizard itself. Set the default channels every new member lands in, and choose whether Discord also suggests channels of its own or shows only what you wrote. It's the fastest way to get someone into the right rooms with the right roles before they ever open a role picker. Needs Community set up first. (Configure → Onboarding.)

Welcome screen & server widget

Discord's invite-time welcome screen (a description plus up to five channel shortcuts) and the embeddable server widget — both kept in sync, with a copy-ready embed builder for the widget. (Configure → Welcome & widget.)

Automated snapshots

Periodically capture a backup of your whole server on a schedule, keeping the most recent N. Automated snapshots are tamper-resistant — they can't be deleted manually, so your safety net stays intact. (Configure → Auto snapshots.)

AutoMod

Discord's native AutoMod, in your blueprint: keyword filters, username (member-profile) filters, the built-in profanity / sexual-content / slur presets, spam blocking, and mention-spam limits — each with exempt roles/channels and actions (block the message, send a staff alert, time the member out, or quarantine them). (Configure → AutoMod.)

Social alerts — go-live & new-post notifications

Announce when a creator goes live or posts — your own channels or your favorite creators, Packet just watches public feeds. It posts a rich card to the channel you pick, exactly once per stream or post (no spam, no duplicates). (Configure → Social alerts.)

Platforms you can watch (what to put in the Creator box):

Setup: open Configure → Social alerts, + Add alert, pick a platform, paste the creator, and choose the channel to post in. Twitch and Kick need a one-time setup by the bot's operator (a free developer app — see .env.example); every other platform works out of the box. Hit Send test alert to preview the card — it uses the creator's most recent post (or current stream), so you can see a real alert without waiting, even for someone who rarely posts.

Post style — each alert is one of two styles (pick it per alert; new alerts start on the recommended one for that platform, and you can switch any time):

• Link preview (recommended for posts, videos, news — YouTube, Reddit, GitHub, Steam, RSS, Bluesky, Mastodon): Packet posts your message with the link, and Discord builds the rich preview — the image, title, and summary pulled straight from the page, exactly like when you paste the link yourself. This is usually the best look, and it's what you want if a manual link post shows more than a Packet card.
• Packet card (recommended for live streams — Twitch, Kick): Packet builds its own embed (with the stream title, game, and viewer count). Use this when you want full control of the card, or for streams (which aren't a web page Discord can preview).

Make it yours — each alert can also have:

• a custom message (with variables — see below), and, in Packet card style, a custom embed; leave them blank for Packet's built-in defaults;
• a ping role (pairs perfectly with a self-serve role from the Role Caller — members opt into "stream pings" themselves);
• filters — only alert when a stream is playing certain games, or when a title contains certain keywords;
• a cooldown so a flaky stream can't spam the channel;
• a live role (Twitch/Kick) — give a member a "🔴 Live" role while they're streaming, removed automatically when they go offline.

Alert variables (for the message + embed): {creator}, {title}, {url}, {game}, {viewers}, {platform}, {thumbnail} (the post's own image), and {mention} (the ping role). Plus {server} and {memberCount}. For example: {mention} **{creator}** is live playing {game}! {url}

Not supported (yet): TikTok, X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Threads don't offer a free way to watch arbitrary creators, so they're not available. Many of those creators cross-post to a platform above — watch them there.

Moderation — warn, mute, kick, ban with memory

Moderate your server from /mod in Discord: warn, mute (timeout), kick, and ban members — each recorded as a numbered case with its reason, and /mod history shows a member's whole record. Set up an escalation ladder so Packet auto-mutes, kicks, or bans once a member accumulates enough strikes. Discord's own actions (a manual ban, an AutoMod timeout) can feed the same record, so repeat offenders escalate even when no staff are online. In Configure, choose the mod-log channel, which staff roles are exempt, whether the member gets a DM, and the escalation thresholds. (Configure → Moderation; the actions themselves are /mod commands in Discord.)

Server logging — a record of what happens

Keep a record of your server's activity. Packet mirrors joins and leaves, nickname and role changes, bans and kicks, channel and server edits, and members using Packet's own features — to a log channel in Discord AND a dashboard activity feed on the server's Status page. Route different kinds to different channels, exempt certain roles or channels, choose who each log entry posts as, and set how long the dashboard feed keeps history. (Configure → Logging.)

Support tickets — private, staff-routed help rooms

Let members open private, staff-only help rooms. Post a panel with a button members click to open a ticket, and Packet creates a private channel and writes the permissions itself, so a ticket can't leak. Staff claim, reply, close, and triage tickets right in Discord (/ticket) or from a full dashboard with search, filters, priorities, tags, and canned replies — and a cross-server Tickets hub manages every server you run in one place. Set the staff roles, an auto-close timer for idle tickets, a satisfaction survey on close, and optional questions asked before a ticket opens. A panel's opening message can use {ticket} and {opener}. (Configure → Tickets.)

Dynamic voice channels — rooms that appear when they're needed

Stop running out of voice channels. Point Packet at a hub channel and it makes rooms on demand, in one of two shapes. A clone hub leaves the hub itself perfectly usable and keeps one spare numbered channel trailing the set (Lounge 1, Lounge 2, and so on), so there's a free room the moment the last one fills — and empties clean themselves up. A personal hub is join-to-create: joining moves the member into a room of their own with a control panel to rename it, lock it, set a user limit, permit or kick someone, or hand it over. Personal rooms can start open to everyone, open to one role, or locked until the owner lets people in. Give a hub a role and those members can also call up a room with /voice create. Name new rooms with a template, using {user.name} and {game} for whatever the owner is playing. (Configure → Voice.)

Game server boards — live status for your game server

Put a live status card for your game server in Discord. Give Packet the address and port, pick the game, and name the channels to post it in — Packet re-checks on a timer and edits the same message in place, so the channel shows current status instead of filling up with repeat posts. When a check finds nothing has changed, the card is left alone rather than rewritten with the same words, so the Last updated time on it tells you how long the server has been steady. A card can show players online, the map, the version, a copy-ready connect address, response time, how much of the time Packet has been able to reach the server, and the busiest it has seen — and it can go green when the server is up and red when it isn't. When Packet can't reach it, the card says so plainly: the player count disappears rather than showing a made-up zero, while the connect details stay put so people know where to try. Enshrouded and 7 Days to Die are named directly, plus a Source query option for other games that answer the same standard query. Start from a ready-made card and edit it, laying it out with the board variables listed under Message variables below. (Configure → Game servers.)

Leveling & XP

Reward the members who actually show up. Packet counts messages and time spent in voice and turns them into XP, with a cooldown between earns and an optional daily ceiling so nobody can farm it — voice earning can require other people in the channel, skip the AFK channel, and pause while someone is muted. Say where it counts, too: name channels, categories, or roles that never earn, and a bot-command or spam channel stops feeding the leaderboard. A category covers every channel inside it, including ones you add later, and threads follow the channel they live in. Or turn it around and name the only places where chatting and talking count. Set level rewards to hand out a role at a level: they're free, unlimited, and stackable, so one level can grant several roles, and a role can come back off if a member later falls below it. Choose how a level-up is announced — in a channel, by DM, as a reply where it happened, or not at all — and write that announcement yourself with {level}, {xp} and {rank}. Shape the level curve so ranks arrive as quickly or as slowly as you want. Post a self-updating leaderboard in any channel, all-time or by day, week, or month. Members check themselves with /level rank, which draws a card showing their level, where they stand, how far they are into the next level, their coins and their daily streak. The style option picks the look. (Configure → Leveling & economy.)

Coins & the shop

Add a second, spendable currency alongside XP and you have an economy. Coins come from the same chatting and talking that earns XP, plus a daily claim that grows the longer a member keeps their streak, an hourly top-up, and a small random handout on a short cooldown — each with its own limits. Coins can also land automatically every time someone levels up. Members spend them in the shop: up to twenty-five items, each a role at a price you set, listed on a managed message in its own channel or opened privately with /economy shop. Nobody can buy a role they already hold. Members can check their balance, read a full history of where their coins went, and rank each other on a richest-members board — and you set whether those replies post publicly, clear themselves after a few seconds, or stay private, which each member can change for themselves. (Configure → Leveling & economy.)

The games arcade

A full arcade, and every game is off until you switch it on. Coinflip, Dice, Rock Paper Scissors, Slots, Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat, Keno, Video Poker, Higher or Lower, Crash, Mines, Tower, the Spinner, Scratch Cards and a plain Bet all share one set of settings — switch it on, set the smallest and largest wager, add a cooldown, and give it a channel. The house takes no cut: a wager pays what the game itself pays. Trivia earns instead of wagering — up to ten independent setups, one per channel, each with its own format, theme, and difficulty. Duels stake two members against each other, and a private room lets a member play somewhere quieter. Add boards and Packet keeps a how-to and a launch button at the bottom of every game channel, and /game guide explains whatever you turned on. (Configure → Leveling & economy.)

Prize pools, tournaments & the lottery

Every game played against the house feeds one growing House Prize Fund, so members watch a single number climb instead of three unrelated ones. It's won outright by 💎💎💎 on the slots, a 🚀 on the spinner, or 👑👑👑 on a scratch card — and you set a guaranteed minimum the pot builds toward, a ceiling on how large it can grow, and whether a winner takes the lot or leaves some to roll over. The same fund pays a tournament: a daily, weekly, monthly, or calendar-scheduled contest where the top players split a prize, ranked by most wins, biggest single win, net profit, or total wagered. And it pays a lottery — a scheduled draw where members buy tickets with coins, every coin of which goes into the fund. You can also cap the largest payout any single play may make. (Configure → Leveling & economy.)

Server groups

If you run more than one Discord server, you can link them into a group so members build one level and rank across the whole set, not just a single server. It layers on top of what they already earn locally: their own server's level keeps working exactly as before, and the group adds a combined ladder alongside it. See it with /level rank, scope set to Server group, and post a self-updating group leaderboard the same way you'd post a server or global one. Level rewards, the automatic roles members get at a level, can key off the group's level too.

Linking servers is mutual by design. Every server in the group lists the same servers, including itself, by server ID. The group only turns on once every server on that list has listed every other one back, so no server can attach itself to a group without the rest agreeing. One server takes the lead and sets the group's overall pace, and a live check in Configure shows exactly which servers still haven't reciprocated. If a group ever stops being mutual, its leaderboard quietly disappears until it's active again. A group can hold up to 50 servers.

Off by default. (Configure → Leveling & economy.)

Packet updates — hear from Packet directly

Opt in to Packet's own announcements. Pick a channel and Packet posts new features, fixes, and news there as a clean, managed message — so you find out what's new without leaving your server. Add a ping role if you want members notified. (Configure → Packet updates.)

Almost everything Packet posts can carry variables: welcomes, scheduled messages, forum posts and announcements, level-up messages, a ticket panel's opening message, social alerts, and game server boards. You type them into the field, and they're filled in when the message is sent. They're case-insensitive, and anything Packet doesn't recognize is left exactly as you typed it, so a typo shows up rather than quietly vanishing.

Where each one works. The {user.*} group needs somebody to point at, so it only fills in where a message is about one member: the Greeter's welcome, goodbye and ban messages, and the welcome DM. Everything else can use {server} and {memberCount}. The pinned welcome panel is a single post that Packet edits rather than a message per member, so put {server} there and save {user} for the join message.

And each feature adds its own on top.

Game server board variables

A board's card is yours to lay out, and these are the pieces you build it from. The first group stays on the card whatever happens, because it's either something you typed or something Packet knows from its own record of checking. The second group comes from the server itself, so when Packet can't reach it those pieces drop out rather than showing a stale or made-up number.

A board you've only just set up hasn't been checked yet, so the uptime and last-checked pieces have nothing to show until the first check goes out. Anything left unfilled shows as the variable you typed, which is your cue that it isn't available on that card.

• Type @RoleName (the exact role name) to ping a role. @everyone and @here work too.
• Type #channel-name (the exact channel name) to turn it into a clickable channel link.

One catch: Discord only renders mentions in a message's body and inside an embed's description or field values — not in an embed title, author, or footer. In those spots, use {user.name} (a plain name) instead of {user} (a mention), or they'll show as raw code. (Packet handles this for you in titles — {user} there shows the name automatically.)

Greeter messages, scheduled messages, forum posts, game-server boards, and social alerts can include a rich embed: a title, description, accent color, author line, thumbnail and banner images, fields, footer, and a timestamp. Set {user.avatar} as the thumbnail for a welcome card, use {memberCount} in the footer, and so on. Leave the embed blank for a plain-text message.

Adding your own image

The thumbnail and banner take a link to an image, not an upload — so the image needs to live somewhere online first. Two easy options:

• Discord itself. Drop the image into any channel (a private staff channel is fine), then right-click it and Copy Link. You already have this, and it's the quickest.
• An image host like Imgur. Upload, then copy the direct image link — the one that ends in .png or .jpg (e.g. i.imgur.com/abc123.png), not the page the image is displayed on. This is the single most common mistake: a page link shows nothing.

Any public link straight to an image file (.png, .jpg, .gif, .webp) works. Keep it reachable — the card links to your image rather than keeping a copy, so if you delete it or make it private, the picture stops showing on the card.

Your server's icon, banner, emoji and stickers work differently: add those in Discord directly. Packet doesn't upload images for them.

• Configure — build and edit everything above, visually.
• Diff — preview exactly what an apply will change.
• Apply — push it live (with an automatic backup first).
• Commands — the full slash-command reference.
• Changelog — what's new.
• Questions or something off? The Feedback page reaches the team.