Answers before you connect a bot
Does discord-mcp host my bot or see my token?#
No. discord-mcp is a local stdio MCP server (or a bearer-protected Streamable HTTP endpoint you deploy yourself). Your MCP client starts the process and passes your bot token through its own environment. There is no hosted bot relay and no separate discord-mcp account that ever sees your credentials.
What does it cost?#
The CLI ships as the open-source npm package @discord-mcp/cli, MIT licensed. You bring your own Discord bot (free through Discord's Developer Portal) and your own MCP client. There is no discord-mcp subscription or usage fee.
Which Discord permissions does my bot need?#
Only what your workflow calls. discord-mcp cannot do more than your bot can do in Discord: your bot's server role and any channel-specific overrides are the real access boundary. Start with View Channels and Send Messages for the tutorial, then add moderation, role, webhook, or thread permissions only when a specific tool needs them. Never grant Administrator as a shortcut. See the quickstart for the exact walkthrough.
Can an ordinary write execute without confirmation?#
Yes, and this catches people who assume otherwise. Only 31 of the 208 tools, every irreversible delete plus ban, kick, prune, leave-guild, and the two command bulk-overwrites, require both MCP_DRY_RUN=false at launch and __confirm:true on the call. Ordinary writes like messages_send, channels_create_guild_channel, and webhooks_execute are not gated and can run on the first call. Read how the confirmation gate works before you connect a bot with write access to a real community.
Is the confirmation gate the same as human approval?#
No. It is a mechanical two-key guard, not proof a human reviewed the call. An autonomous or compromised caller can send __confirm:true whenever the server is armed with MCP_DRY_RUN=false. Keep dry-run enabled as a hard stop and configure your client or UI to require human approval before consequential calls reach the server at all.
What is Activity Evidence, and how is it different from the CLI's local activity log?#
Activity Evidence is an authenticated completion record produced only after a full guild blueprint apply finishes and its live Discord readback matches the approved plan; you get it by calling guild_blueprint_evidence. The CLI command discord-mcp activity is a different thing: a private, local, privacy-safe journal of setup, doctor, smoke, and blueprint-stage outcomes that contains no Discord IDs, names, message content, tokens, or raw errors. See Get a verified Discord outcome.
Does it work with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex?#
Yes, plus any generic MCP client. discord-mcp init prints a ready client config snippet for each. Local stdio is the default transport; a bearer-protected Streamable HTTP transport is available for remote deployments, including the OpenAI Responses API. See production configuration.
Does discord-mcp call an LLM API on my behalf?#
No, for the five intelligence tools (intelligence_summarize_channel, classify_messages, extract_entities, moderate_content, draft_response) it uses MCP sampling, a callback into your own MCP client's LLM. discord-mcp ships zero API keys and never proxies channel content to a third-party inference provider. When your client does not support sampling, the tool returns raw data plus a fallback marker instead of guessing. See Summarize a busy channel.
What happens if a bulk operation partially fails?#
Discord itself can return HTTP 200 with both a success list and a failure list populated, for example members_bulk_ban returning banned_users and failed_users in the same response. discord-mcp surfaces both arrays rather than collapsing them into a single pass/fail signal, so audit both before you report success. See Stop a raid for a worked example.
Is this production-ready?#
The project is pre-1.0. An HTTP transport security review closed the transport-level v1 gate on 2026-08-08, with no open P0 or P1 findings, but the maintainers still recommend validating the exact release in a private test server before production use. See production configuration for the current hardening guidance.
Where do I go next?#
New to discord-mcp: start with the quickstart. Already connected: find the tool you need or work through a recipe. Back to the overview.