Auto Moderation

Auto Moderation is what somebody says, and the name they change it to. It never punishes anybody itself: every action runs through the same engine a moderator's command does, so a filter hit files a real numbered case in the same history. Arrivals are Security's job, not this system's.

1Setting it up

1. 1

   Switch it on

   Essentials → Auto Moderation.

2. 2

   Add two or three rules, not thirty

   Start from a premade — there are eighteen — or build one from the filter picker. Invite links, mass mentions and message flood cover most of what a small server sees.

3. 3

   Exempt your staff

   The Punishments tab leads with exemptions: roles, channels and members the system skips. A staff channel tripping a rule meant for #general is the fastest way to lose faith in a filter.

4. 4

   Test it before you trust it

   The rule tester on the Rules tab runs the same function the live bot runs. If it passes there, it passes in your server.

The eight tabs

2Filters

35 filters in 7 groups. A rule is one filter, its settings, its scope and its actions — so "no links, except in #media" is one rule rather than a global switch plus an exception list.

#automod-log

ArcloBOTToday at 14:32

Message filtered

Member

@loud.tim

Rule

Discord invites

Action

Deleted · Warned

Case

#1283

Message

join my server discord.gg/…

Auto Moderation · #general

Scope and exemptions

Per rule

Each rule names the channels, categories and roles it applies to or skips. Exemptions on a rule are about that rule.

Server-wide

The Punishments tab's exemption card applies to everything: roles, channels and specific members.

Ignore bots

On by default for most filters. A trap that eats the music bot's now-playing card gets switched off, and then nothing is protected.

What a hit does

Eighteen action types, run in order: delete the message, warn, mute, kick, ban, softban, add or remove roles, set a member's whole role list (quarantine, in one call so there is never a window with no roles), add a reaction to flag it, slow the channel down, DM the member, notify staff, or simply count it.

• Violation threshold is a filter of its own: “N violations in M minutes → do this”, so individual rules can be gentle and the pattern can be punished.
• Punishments go through Moderation's engine, so they file cases, send that punishment's DM and climb its escalation ladder.

Word lists

A list is inert until a rule points at it. Make the list, write a rule, tick the list in that rule — and each list tells you which rules currently use it, or that none do.

• Arclo ships seven built-in lists (slurs, scam domains and the like). They are editable per server as a difference: click a word to strike it out for you only, and add your own on top.
• That way the shared list keeps updating itself — a scam domain added upstream still protects your server, around whatever you decided about the rest.
• Lists can be sorted, downloaded, and replaced from a file (a JSON array, or newline- or comma-separated text).

3Honeypots

A trap channel nobody should ever post in. Anything posted there is, by construction, a bot or somebody who does not read — no heuristic, no false positives, and the cheapest true signal in the whole system.

• Arm existing channels, or let Arclo create one for you and arm it.
• A designed pinned warning is the feature, not decoration: a trap whose channel does not explain itself catches your own curious members.
• Each trap has its own punishments and its own exemptions — ignore bots (on by default), excluded roles and members, an arming grace period, and a maximum account age.
• A thirty-day trigger history records who, what they posted, what ran, and the two numbers that settle whether it was a real person: account age and time in the server.

4Slowmode manager

Slowmode that climbs when a channel gets busy and steps back down when it calms. Two modes, and they are different mechanisms:

The ladder climbs one rung at a time. Jumping straight to the rung matching the current rate would read its own suppression as more traffic and run to the ceiling.

5Auto Purge

A standing instruction to keep a channel clean. One rule can cover many channels, because “clear these six spam channels every hour” is one decision.

• Exempt roles server-wide, and per rule; a protected-channel list makes sure a rule can never reach somewhere it should not.
• Never deleted, whatever the settings: Discord's own system messages, and the channel's sticky message.
• New rules arrive switched off — the only create in the dashboard that does, because it would otherwise start deleting on the next sweep.

6AI moderation

A classifier that scores a message across twelve categories when no cheaper filter has already handled it.

Discord's own AutoMod, and thread notices

• Discord AutoMod rules stay in Server Settings — Arclo does not create or edit them, because two places to look when a message is blocked is worse than one. What Arclo adds is its own action vocabulary on top: when Discord blocks something, Arclo can warn, file a case, quarantine, or count it toward a repeat-offender threshold, per rule or as a default.
• Thread notices sweeps Discord's “started a thread” system messages out of the parent channel, immediately or after a delay, with the usual channel and exemption lists.

Commands