Guilded hosted pilot

The hosted pilot lets approved guilds use the same running Guilded bot. Your guild does not need to download the bot, create a database, or keep a computer running. Admission is by the Guilded owner's approval for each Discord server. This is a small pilot, initially limited to five servers including the owner's server.

Add Guilded — request owner approval

The pilot is open for a small number of guilds. KCaron must approve your server before the hosted bot works there. Adding the bot sends a request; it does not guarantee a place or immediate access. Please wait for approval before setup. The hosted pilot is free. Optional support never buys approval or priority.

Joining with your guild

Open the Add Guilded — request owner approval link above as a server owner or someone allowed to manage your server.
Guilded waits with access disabled and sends its application owner a private Discord message with Approve and Block buttons. Wait for approval. The owner can also preapprove your server ID and send a server-specific invite.
Run /setup start in your server. Choose English or French, your timezone, and the features/channels you want. Use /setup start status:true to check anything still missing. Move Guilded's bot role above roles it needs to assign.
Members can use community activities and polls immediately; they do not need linked WoW characters for those features.
For WoW features, install the addon. The owner provides the shared browser online companion. Enter your own Discord server ID, then use your personal /character pair code. Every member pairs separately. The desktop companion is optional; see the member guide.

An invitation is not an approval. Changing the server ID in a copied invite does not grant access. Unapproved servers have no access; old companion credentials also stop working there. Reapproval does not erase saved guild data.

FAQ and AI

Normal saved FAQ and built-in answers remain available. Reading questions in an answer channel requires the host's Message Content Intent. Optional AI starts off for each new guild. A guild officer can opt in with /mod faq ai, if the host has configured an AI provider.

All guilds share the host's daily AI budget (100 provider attempts by default), with a separate 100-attempt ceiling per guild. These limits reset at midnight UTC, survive restarts, and count failed provider requests too. Reaching a limit stops AI requests; it does not disable saved FAQ, polls, raids or community points. If enabled, the provider receives the question and selected guild facts needed for the answer. Keep private officer information out of public FAQ entries.

For the host owner

Approve from Discord

npm run pilot -- request-link prints the invitation you can share with applicants. Inviting requests access; it never grants approval. New servers remain inactive until the Discord application's owner clicks Approve in the bot's DM. For team-owned applications, only the team's owner receives and can use these buttons. The DM shows the server name, ID, owner ID and member count. Names are unverified labels; verify the ID before admitting a server.

Approval respects the five-server cap, saves to .env.local, updates access immediately and registers the setup commands without restarting. Block saves the decision, leaves the server and silently leaves on subsequent invitations. Only an explicit owner CLI approval overrides a block. Duplicate or old buttons cannot change a completed decision. Keep DMs from Guilded enabled; delivery failures retry hourly and after restart, with access still disabled.

Pending/block decisions and delivered-message IDs live in backups/pilot-requests.json (private, preserved by deployment). Back up this file alongside .env.local. There are at most 100 pending requests; additional unapproved invites are left until that queue is reduced. Already-approved guilds do not generate approval DMs. A lost/deleted request DM can be recovered by the owner CLI using its server ID.

CLI fallback

Deploy the pilot code and database migration through the normal release gates before enabling invitations. In the live service directory, use the owner CLI:

npm run pilot -- status
npm run pilot -- enable
npm run pilot -- approve DISCORD_SERVER_ID

These commands edit only HOSTED_PILOT and HOSTED_GUILD_IDS in .env.local. The primary DISCORD_GUILD_ID is always approved. Approve any existing personal test server you intend to retain before restarting. Do not automatically approve every server the bot happens to be in. The default HOSTED_GUILD_LIMIT=5 counts the primary server and rejects excess approvals.

On Oracle, apply changes with sudo systemctl restart guilded and verify sudo systemctl is-active guilded and the HTTPS /health endpoint. Run the CLI with an account allowed to edit /opt/guilded/.env.local; don't paste that file into chat. Then generate the invitation:

npm run pilot -- invite DISCORD_SERVER_ID

The URL selects the approved server and requests the setup permissions, without Administrator. In the Discord Developer Portal, enable Guild Install, the bot and applications.commands scopes, and Public Bot if other server owners will invite it. Keep Require OAuth2 Code Grant off for the simple bot invite flow. The application setting does not replace Guilded's approval checks. See Discord's authorization documentation.

To withdraw approval:

npm run pilot -- revoke DISCORD_SERVER_ID

Restart the service to apply CLI changes. It disables unapproved servers, blocks their commands and companion requests, and excludes their pending scheduled work. Guild records are retained so an accidental revocation is recoverable. This is not a data deletion command. Keep the current server environment when deploying; approval changes made only in a local checkout do not update Oracle.

Pilot rollout and optional support

Start by approving only a couple of additional guilds. The five-server cap includes the owner's server and any approved test server; it is a safety ceiling, not a target that must be filled. Check each guild's setup, pairing and activity before approving the next one. No guild is approved automatically.

Support Guilded explains voluntary support. Donations do not unlock the addon, hosted approval, extra permissions or a guaranteed uptime.

AI_GLOBAL_DAILY_LIMIT caps attempts across the whole host; AI_DAILY_LIMIT caps attempts per guild. Either can be zero to stop provider requests. These are request limits, not a currency guarantee: configure provider-side billing limits too. Usage is in AiDailyUsage, with UTC day, global/guild scope and attempts; usage older than 90 days is pruned. Questions and credentials are not stored there.

Hosting budget and launch checks

This change skips database reads for empty/solo voice channels and removes a redundant keepalive. Completed delivery cleanup now runs with six-hour retention instead of every minute (four scheduled checks/day instead of 1,440). Leaderboards fetch only the three point fields they need. Admission decisions use local files, not database polling. Scheduled jobs still query the database every minute. Production moved from Neon to Aiven Free on 9 October 2026. See the migration record. Aiven avoids a monthly compute-hour budget, but its storage, memory and connection limits still require monitoring. Do not assume a shared bot can grow indefinitely on free hosting. Before adding more guilds, measure database compute, storage, server memory and AI usage in the existing provider dashboards. Keep the pilot bounded until a full activity cycle has been observed. Removing FAQ alone would not fix always-active database compute.

For every approved guild, check setup as an admin and as an ordinary member, personal pairing, a community poll and a scheduled announcement. Confirm a credential from another guild is rejected. Automated tests cover approval validation, companion admission, guild-scoped credential lookup, and concurrent AI reservations; they do not replace live Discord acceptance in a new guild.

Independent hosting remains supported with HOSTED_PILOT=false; use the owner walkthrough for that path.