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claudecord

Getting started

claudecord is a self-hosted Discord bot. You run the infrastructure — on a home server, a VPS, or your laptop. There is no shared, instance-wide Claude credential: every member who talks to the bot links their own Claude subscription, and every run is billed to them.

Prerequisites

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  1. Docker (recommended) or Node.js ≥ 20, to run the bot itself.
  2. A Discord account to create the bot application (free).
  3. Each person who will talk to the bot needs their own Claude subscription (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise) to generate a Claude Code OAuth token. The subscription route is what this project is built around: flat-rate, no surprise bills, and no shared quota.

1. Create a Discord application and put the token in .env

Section titled “1. Create a Discord application and put the token in .env”

At discord.com/developers/applications, create an application, add a Bot, and on the Bot page enable the Message Content Intent (required for @mentions — the single most common setup mistake is forgetting this one). See Discord app setup for screenshots.

There is no dashboard form for this — the dashboard itself needs the bot online to be reachable at all (see step 3), so the bot token has to reach the instance through .env from the start:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/t11z/claudecord.git
cd claudecord
cp .env.example .env

Edit .env and set DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and DISCORD_APPLICATION_ID from the Developer Portal’s Bot and General Information pages.

2. Start the bot and invite it to a server

Section titled “2. Start the bot and invite it to a server”
Terminal window
docker compose up -d

Build the invite link yourself — it only needs the application ID, no running dashboard required — and open it in a browser:

https://discord.com/oauth2/authorize?client_id=YOUR_APPLICATION_ID&scope=bot%20applications.commands&permissions=397552861248

Prefer bare Node? See Deployment for the non-Docker path.

Section titled “3. Sign in and link your own Claude subscription”

In the server you just invited the bot to, run:

/dashboard

The bot replies (visible only to you) with a one-time sign-in link. Open it — you’re now signed in, and as the first person to sign in with Manage Guild on that server, you’re the instance’s first admin automatically (see Dashboard accounts for how that decision is made, and for DASHBOARD_ADMIN_IDS if you’d rather set it explicitly).

Since you haven’t linked a Claude subscription yet, you land straight in a short wizard. On any machine with Claude Code installed, generate a token:

Terminal window
claude setup-token

This walks you through a browser login and prints a long-lived token (sk-ant-oat01-…), valid for about a year. Paste it into the wizard — the bot validates it with a real (tiny) query before storing it. GitHub linking is the next step and skippable; skip it for now unless you’re setting up agentic mode.

Section titled “4. Everyone else links their own subscription”

Every other member who wants the bot to answer them does the same thing — /dashboard in Discord, then the wizard — or, without ever opening a browser, runs /link-claude link directly and pastes the token into the modal that pops up. Either path validates the same way and stores to the same place; nobody else’s subscription is ever touched by someone else linking theirs.

5. Say hello

Section titled “5. Say hello”

In any text channel the bot can see:

@YourBot explain the difference between a thread and a forum post

The bot reacts with 👀, opens a thread, and streams its answer there. Keep typing in the thread — no mention needed, it remembers everything. If you see a 🔑 reaction instead, you (or whoever spoke) haven’t run /link-claude yet.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”