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Getting Started

This section takes you from “I have a Discord server” to “I have my own bot running in it.” It is split into five pages:

  • Prerequisites lists what you need to gather before touching the code: a Discord application, a token, Docker, and a host to run on.
  • Quickstart is the fast path. If you have done Discord bot setup before, this is the only page you need.
  • First Bot Tutorial is the slow path. It walks through every step with no assumed knowledge, including screenshots of the Discord developer portal.
  • Verifying Your Setup is the post-deploy checklist. Run it once after your first start to make sure each piece is healthy.

When to use discord-bot-rs

This project is a good fit if any of the following describe you:

  • You want to self-host a Discord bot rather than rent a hosted one, and you are comfortable running a Docker container on a Linux box.
  • You want one codebase that can run several distinct bots (different names, different personalities, different feature sets) from a single deployment.
  • You want a bot with batteries included: AI chat, music, games, moderation, and a Minecraft integration, all behind feature flags so you can switch off what you do not need.
  • You want a Rust codebase you can read, fork, and extend without fighting a framework.

When NOT to use it

Reach for something else if:

  • You just want a moderation or music bot for one server and you do not want to run anything yourself. A hosted bot from top.gg will be faster.
  • You want a JavaScript or Python codebase to hack on. Sapphire.js, discord.py, and pycord are all excellent and have larger communities.
  • You need a single small bot and the overhead of Docker plus PostgreSQL feels like too much. A 100-line script is the right answer for that.

System requirements

The bot is tested on Linux. macOS and Windows (via WSL2) work as long as Docker Desktop is running. You will need:

  • Docker Engine 20.10 or newer with the Compose plugin.
  • About 2 GB of free RAM. The bot itself is small; most of the budget goes to PostgreSQL and ffmpeg during music transcoding.
  • About 5 GB of free disk for the Docker images, the database volume, and yt-dlp cache.
  • Outbound network access to Discord, your AI provider, and (if you enable music) YouTube.

A Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM is enough for a single instance. A $5/month VPS is enough for several. Your laptop is enough for testing.

Time investment

Plan on about 10 minutes from git clone to a running bot if you have set up a Discord application before and you already have Docker installed. Budget closer to 25 minutes if it is your first time, mostly because the Discord developer portal has a few non-obvious clicks.

Next step

Head to Prerequisites to gather what you need before the first command.