The message editor
The editor Arclo uses everywhere it is going to post something. Plain messages, embeds, Components V2 layouts, buttons and dropdowns, with a live preview of what Discord will render.
On this page
Welcome messages, ticket panels, verification panels, giveaway announcements, log embeds, suggestion cards, alert posts, reminders, tags. Anything Arclo says out loud is written in the same editor. Learn it once.
Add a message above everything… (optional)
Welcome to Nebula Collective
Start in #rules, then pick your roles below. Events are announced every Friday.
Need help?
Open a ticket in #support
Events
Fridays at 8 PM
Read the rules
Pick rolesLive preview of the published message. The pinned text and every element post as their own messages, so the stack appears under one bot header in Discord. Click a button or dropdown option to see its configured response.
Plain message or embed
Every editor can produce either. Which one you should reach for is not a style question:
- Plain message: text, mentions, emoji, and a normal-looking message. Mentions in a plain message ping, which is often the point. A new tag starts as one, and so does a sticky made with a command; Add embed turns either into an embed, and the text stays above it.
- Embed: a bordered card with a title, description, fields, images, an author line, a footer and a color. Everything Arclo announces defaults to this, and the plain text box above it stays available for a mention or a line of text.
- Components V2: Discord's newer layout: containers, sections, separators and media, with buttons arranged inside the card rather than under it. Most editors offer it beside Traditional Embed (welcome messages, verification and ticket panels, giveaways, polls, embed messages and more), and the Information Channel is built on it.
A Components V2 message has no `content`
That is a Discord rule, not an Arclo one: a V2 message carries text display components instead of a message body, has no author or footer icon slots, and has no timestamp field. Arclo renders the author as a small line above the title, and the timestamp as text, baked at publish time. Switching a design from V2 to a classic embed drops the separator rows, because a classic embed has nowhere to put them.
What you can set
- Title & description
- The description is the body of the message and takes markdown, line breaks, emoji and placeholders.
- Color
- The left-hand stripe. Leaving it on Arclo's built-in light blue means no color was chosen, and it is replaced at send time by your server's Default embed color (General → Settings → Defaults) if you set one. A color you pick yourself always wins. See Server defaults.
- Author
- A small line above the title, with an optional icon.
{avatar}and{server_icon}are the usual icon values. - Fields
- Named blocks under the description, optionally side by side.
- Image & thumbnail
- A large image at the bottom, and a small one top-right. Upload your own (PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF up to 8 MB) or point at a generated banner.
- Footer & timestamp
- The bottom line, with an optional icon and an optional live timestamp.
- Buttons
- Where an editor has them: link buttons open a URL, and response buttons reply with a message you wrote. A response button takes one of Discord's four colors (blue, gray, green, red); a link button is always Discord's gray link style.
- Dropdown
- A select menu whose options each carry their own response.
The preview is the message
The panel beside the editor is not an approximation. It is drawn from the same payload builder the bot sends with, so if the preview shows a color, a line break or a truncated field, that is what Discord shows. Sample values fill placeholders so you can judge the length of the real thing rather than of {username}.
Type `{` to insert a placeholder
Every text field in every editor opens a menu of the placeholders that field supports. Keep typing to filter it, move with the arrow keys, and press Enter or Tab to insert one (Escape closes it).
Custom command replies
Commands are edited in the same way, with one important property: the editor contains the real text Arclo sends, not a description of it. Most commands' settings have a Success reply and an Error reply editor.
- The default design in the editor is the exact sentence the bot replies with today, with the variable pieces as named placeholders.
- Editing it replaces that reply outright. Nothing hidden is appended underneath, so the editor never lies about the message.
- Commands with more than one failure mode expose an Error variants row (one numbered pill per outcome, each with its own editable text) so “that member outranks you” and “that duration is too long” can read differently.
- A reply you have changed carries a Customized tag, and Reset to the built-in reply puts the original text back. Editing it back to the original by hand counts as the original too.
Limits worth knowing
| Thing | Limit | Set by |
|---|---|---|
| Embed description | 4,096 characters | Discord |
| Field name / value | 256 / 1,024 characters | Discord |
| Fields per embed | 25 | Discord |
| Total embed text | 6,000 characters | Discord |
| Buttons per row / rows | 5 / 5 | Discord |
| Dropdown options | 25 | Discord |
| Plain message text | 2,000 characters | Discord |
Placeholders count toward the limits after they are filled in
A description that fits in the editor can overflow once {reason} becomes a paragraph. The preview uses realistic sample values so this shows up before it ships, but a genuinely long value can still push a message past Discord's limits at send time, and Discord refuses a message that is over them. Leave headroom in any field that carries free text.
Still stuck? Ask in the support server: somebody there has almost certainly configured this before.