Verifying Your Setup

Once you have run docker compose up -d and the logs look reasonable, this page is the post-deploy checklist. Run through it once. If every command matches its expected output, your bot is healthy. If something is off, the bottom of the page points at what to read next.

All commands assume you are in the repo root.

Docker-level checks

The containers should all be running and healthy.

docker compose ps

You should see three services: postgres, bot, and mcp-gateway. Each should report running in the STATUS column. postgres and bot also report healthy once their healthchecks settle (a few seconds for postgres, up to a minute for the bot the first time).

If any service is restarting, look at its logs to find out why.

Next, the bot’s recent logs:

docker compose logs bot --tail 20

A healthy startup ends with a sequence like this, in roughly this order:

INFO discord_bot::db: Database initialized (schema: example).
INFO discord_bot: Instance config loaded: Example Bot (prefix: !)
INFO discord_bot: Starting bot...
INFO serenity::gateway::bridge::shard_runner: [ShardRunner ShardInfo { id: ShardId(0), total: 1 }] Running
INFO discord_bot::events::ready: Example Bot is connected! (ID: 123456789012345678)
INFO discord_bot::mcp: MCP server listening on 0.0.0.0:9090

Exact wording can shift slightly between releases, but you should see the database schema initialize, the instance config load, a shard enter Running, a line stating that the bot “is connected” along with its user ID, and the MCP server bind to port 9090. If the last log line is hours old and there is nothing about errors, the bot is sitting idle. That is fine.

And postgres:

docker compose logs postgres --tail 5

You should see database system is ready to accept connections.

Discord-level checks

Open Discord. The bot should appear in your server’s member list with a green dot. A grey dot means the bot is not running or cannot reach Discord; the Docker-level checks above will tell you which.

Try a prefix command in any channel the bot can see:

!m help

You should get a help embed immediately. If your config.toml sets a different prefix, use that instead. discord-bot-rs uses prefix commands only — there are no slash commands to sync.

If you configured an AI API key, @mention the bot and ask it something. You should get a reply within a few seconds. If you did not configure an AI key, mentions are silently ignored — that is expected, not a bug.

Database-level checks

The bot uses one PostgreSQL database with a separate schema per instance. Confirm your instance’s schema exists:

docker compose exec postgres psql -U discord_bot -d discord_bot -c '\dn'

You should see at least one schema beyond the built-in public, information_schema, and pg_* schemas. The name should match your instance’s DB_SCHEMA from .env.

If the schema is missing, the bot did not finish its first migration — check docker compose logs bot for migration errors.

MCP-level checks

If you have not exposed the MCP port (the default), this section does not apply. The MCP server inside the bot still runs, but it is only reachable from inside the Docker network.

If you have mapped the port to your host, confirm it responds:

curl -i http://localhost:9090/mcp

You should get an HTTP response. The exact body depends on whether you configured authentication; the important thing is that you get a response rather than a connection refused. See MCP Exposure for how to expose it safely.

What “good” looks like

A healthy bot has all of the following true at the same time:

All Compose services report running, and postgres and bot report healthy.
The bot’s recent logs contain a “is connected! (ID: …)” line and have no errors.
The bot has a green dot in your Discord server.
!m help replies when invoked in a channel the bot can read.
Your instance’s PostgreSQL schema exists.

If those five things are true, you are done. From here, treat any future log errors as the diagnostic signal — the bot logs to stdout, which Compose captures and docker compose logs reads.

What to do if something fails

If any of the checks above fail, two pages have most of the answers:

Monitoring covers reading logs, watching healthchecks, and what each service’s failure modes look like.
FAQ collects the issues that come up repeatedly.

If neither helps, open an issue on https://github.com/MrMcEpic/discord-bot-rs with the output of docker compose ps and the last 50 lines of docker compose logs bot.

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