Running Unum as your own bot

A custom bot swaps the shared Unum account for a Discord application you own. Your server sees your name, your avatar and your bot tag. Everything behind it is the same Unum: the same dashboard, the same features, the same slash commands, registered against your application instead of ours.

Nothing about your configuration moves or resets. You are changing which account does the work, not what the work is.

Your bot runs on the same shared Unum infrastructure as the shared bot, in the same process, not on a machine of its own. You bring the Discord application; we run it.

• An account on the Discord Developer Portal. Any Discord account can create an application.
• Manage Server on the Discord server, so you can invite a second bot to it.
• Ten minutes. Most of the work is copying two values from Discord into the dashboard.

The dashboard page is Custom Bot, under Scale and Control in the sidebar. It walks you through three steps (Create App, Invite Bot, Add Token), and the steps below are those three in order.

1. 01Open the Discord Developer Portal at discord.com/developers/applications and click New Application.
2. 02Give it a name. Your server's name is the usual choice, because the name is what members will see.
3. 03Open the Bot section in the left sidebar. Set the avatar here too, if you want one.
4. 04Enable all three Privileged Gateway Intents: Presence Intent, Server Members Intent and Message Content Intent.

1. 01Copy the Application ID from your application's General Information page.
2. 02Paste it into the Application ID field on the Custom Bot page. An invite link appears once the field has a value.
3. 03Follow the link, pick your server and approve. The link asks for Administrator, so your bot can do everything Unum offers without you granting permissions one at a time.
4. 04Come back to the dashboard and continue to step three.

If you would rather not grant Administrator, you can trim the permissions afterwards from Server Settings. Read Permissions and role hierarchy first, so you know which ones each feature actually needs. Remember that hierarchy still applies to your own bot exactly as it does to the shared one.

The token is your bot's password. It is not shown again after you first see it, so you generate a fresh one and paste it straight into the dashboard.

1. 01In the Developer Portal, go back to the Bot section and click Reset Token. Confirm, then copy the token Discord shows you.
2. 02Paste it into the Bot Token field on the Custom Bot page.
3. 03Click Save and Connect.

The token is encrypted before it is stored, and the dashboard never shows it back to you. Once saved, the only thing the page displays is your Application ID. Resetting the token in Discord invalidates any copy you pasted elsewhere, which is the right thing to do if you ever think a token has leaked.

After you save, the page shows a status and refreshes itself every couple of seconds while the connection is being made. There are three states:

Connecting your bot

The token has been saved and the connection is being set up. This is the state every new custom bot starts in, and it usually lasts a few seconds. The page updates on its own, so there is no need to reload it.

Active

Your bot is connected to Discord and its slash commands have been registered against your application. From here on, your bot is the one doing the work.

Connection error

The connection failed, or an established connection dropped. The page shows the reason Discord gave, along with a reminder to check the token and the three privileged intents, and a field for re-entering the token.

The two things that cause almost every error are a token that is no longer valid and an intent that was never enabled. Both are fixed in the Developer Portal, then retried from the dashboard.

A token stops working the moment you reset it in the Developer Portal, and Discord will also invalidate one it believes has been exposed publicly. Either way the outcome is the same: the connection drops and the page moves to Connection error.

1. 01Reset the token in the Developer Portal to get a working one, and copy it.
2. 02On the Custom Bot page, paste it into Re-enter bot token.
3. 03Click Retry Connection and wait for the status to reach Active.

Remove Custom Bot, at the top of the page, asks you to confirm and then disconnects your bot straight away and deletes the stored token. Your server configuration and history are untouched.

The application itself is yours and stays in your Developer Portal, and your bot stays a member of the server until you remove it in Discord. If you want the shared Unum bot to pick the work back up, keep it in the server rather than kicking it when your custom bot goes live.