Guide

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 Plan 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 as a starting point.
3. Configure it visually (or edit the JSON directly). Configure is organized into the same sections as this guide, with a search box, so you can go straight to the one you need.
4. Plan to preview every change, line by line, then Apply.

A first blueprint, worked through. Say you invite Packet into a small gaming community with no structure yet. Pulling the server in gives you a blueprint that matches what's already there, roles, channels and all, so nothing changes yet and you're never starting from a blank page. From there you might turn on the Role Caller for game-preference roles, write a welcome message, and switch on leveling. Each of those is a few minutes in Configure. When you're ready, the Plan lists exactly what will change (new roles, new channels, updated permissions) before any of it touches your server, and Apply pushes it live.

From Discord, too. Staff can run the same flow with /architect. /architect plan previews a blueprint's changes, /architect apply applies one (a snapshot is taken first), /architect backup takes a snapshot now, and /architect template use starts a blueprint from a template. /architect status, /architect blueprints and /architect snapshots show where things stand. Anyone can run /guide to see what Packet does and which features are switched on in the server they're in.

Made a change you didn't want? Undoing it is the same flow as making it. Open Snapshots, find the backup from just before the change (Packet takes one automatically every time you Apply), and use Restore as blueprint. That turns the snapshot back into a blueprint you can Plan and Apply, so putting your server back is exactly as safe, and exactly as previewable, as changing it was.

What happens to things Apply removes? In Additive mode nothing is ever removed, only added and updated. Full mode matches your blueprint exactly, so a channel or role that isn't in it gets removed, but by default Packet archives it instead of deleting it. A removed channel moves into a hidden Pending deletion category, and a removed role is renamed, stripped of its permissions, and kept with its members still in it, so you can review and delete them yourself in Discord whenever you're ready. Only the server owner can switch a server to permanent deletion instead, on its Status page.

Want Packet to apply changes on its own? A blueprint can be put on a schedule, right from its own page: confirm once what you're arming, and Packet applies it automatically from then on, on whatever cadence you set. If a scheduled apply would ever do more than you originally agreed to, Packet pauses it and waits for you rather than run it blind. See everything your server has scheduled, across every feature, on the Schedules page.

Start from a template

1. Invite Packet and pick your server, as How Packet works describes.
2. Choose a template as your first blueprint instead of starting from a blank page, as About describes.
3. Open the blueprint in Configure and change what you want, using the feature pages to find each section.
4. Preview every change on the Plan page, then Apply it, as How Packet works describes.

Set up tickets

1. Define the roles your staff will use, as Roles, permissions & bands describes.
2. Post a panel with a button that members click to open a ticket, as Support tickets describes.
3. Set the staff roles, an auto-close timer, a survey and any questions to ask first, as Support tickets describes.
4. Decide how moderation actions and server activity are recorded, as Moderation and Server logging describe.
5. Preview the change on the Plan page, then Apply it, as How Packet works describes.

Welcome new members

1. Set up Community first, because Discord wants it before the onboarding wizard, as Community channels describes.
2. Write the questions new members answer and choose the channels they land in, as Onboarding describes.
3. Offer roles that members can pick for themselves, as The Role Caller describes.
4. Write the message Packet posts when someone joins, and an optional welcome DM, as The Greeter describes.
5. Set the welcome screen people see when they follow an invite, as Welcome screen & server widget describes.
6. Preview the change on the Plan page, then Apply it, as How Packet works describes.

Reward your members

1. Turn on leveling and choose how members earn XP, as Leveling & XP describes.
2. Hand out roles at the levels you pick, as Leveling & XP describes.
3. Add coins and stock the shop, as Coins & the shop describes.
4. Switch on the games you want and set the smallest and largest wager, as The games arcade describes.
5. Add a prize pool, a tournament or a lottery, as Prize pools, tournaments & the lottery describes.
6. Preview the change on the Plan page, then Apply it, as How Packet works describes.

Every page of a server's dashboard, and what you do there. Who sees which page follows their Discord permissions in that server, and the owner can narrow it further on the Access page.

• Servers lists your servers: every server where you have Manage Server, and whether Packet is in it yet.
• Blueprint is the blueprint itself, as JSON, with snippets and a reference panel beside it. Pull your current server in, import from another server, save a draft only you can see, or publish it as the server's blueprint. Its Schedule panel arms a blueprint to apply on its own: on a schedule, when a goal is reached, or when pressed in Discord.
• Configure edits everything in this guide, section by section.
• Plan shows every change an apply would make, setting by setting, before anything moves.
• Apply pushes the blueprint live, with a snapshot first. Changes that can't be undone, like deleting a channel with messages in it, ask you to type a confirmation.
• Status shows how the server is set up, recent applies and recent activity.
• Analytics charts your member count, joins and leaves per day, activity and retention.
• Schedules lists everything this server applies or posts on its own.
• Posts keeps giveaways, announcements and polls you save once and use again: post one now, schedule it, or have it repeat.
• Images holds your server's image library. Upload an image once (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP or AVIF, up to 1 MB) and use it in Configure for emoji, stickers and role icons.
• Tickets is the full support console for this server, and the account-level Tickets hub covers every server you run.
• Snapshots lists your backups. Take one now, restore one as a blueprint, or walk through getting the server back to one. The owner also finds member role backups here.
• Changes in Discord shows what changed on the server since your last apply, so you can keep what you want in a new draft of your blueprint. Nothing changes until you apply.
• Safety is home to raid protection, the server freeze, recent incidents and the recovery walk-through.
• Bans keeps copies of your ban list and your own ban list, as Ban lists & recovery describes.
• Access is where the owner decides who can use each Packet power: Discord default, Only me, Only these roles, or, for some powers, These roles too. A limit only narrows what Discord already allows, except where the owner chooses These roles too.
• Templates holds ready-made starting points: full servers and add-ons. Packet ships ten, five starter servers (a creator server, a gaming community, a minimal community, a social hangout, and study and work) and five add-ons (the Arcade, dynamic voice, support tickets, leveling, and a game server board). The Arcade add-on puts your server on the shared economy, and your server keeps its own levels.
• Settings holds your own preferences, which follow your account and change nothing for anyone else, and lets you download or delete the data Packet holds about you.
• My profile is your Packet profile, as Profiles, cards & privacy describes.

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, custom command replies, 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, the welcome DM, the birthday message, and a custom command's reply, where it is the member who ran it. 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.

Telling a member where they stand. Put {level}, {rank} or {coins} in a welcome message, the welcome DM, the birthday message or a custom command's reply and Packet looks up the member the message is about, the one who just joined, whose birthday it is, or who ran the command, and fills in their numbers. Leave them out and nothing is looked up. On a server that shares the Packet-wide economy these are the member's numbers across all Packet servers, unless your server keeps levels to itself, and then level and rank are the member's numbers on your server. A member from other Packet servers brings theirs, and the Packet-wide numbers show only for members who chose to be named on leaderboards shared with other servers. On any other server they are the member's numbers on your server. Where Packet has no number to show, you get a ? instead: the member kept their cross-server numbers private, they haven't earned anything yet ({rank}), or Packet couldn't look them up in time. The message posts either way. A member who asked Packet to stop counting them keeps what they already have, so their numbers show as usual, and {rank} is where they would stand among the members Packet still counts. Goodbye and ban messages don't get these.

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: upload those in Configure → Emoji & stickers, and Packet sets them on Discord when you apply.

• Configure: build and edit everything above, visually.
• Plan: 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.