6.6 KiB
Vanguard Discord bot — brief for the agent building it
You are building the Discord bot for Vanguard. What the bot does is up to the community and you. This file only covers where it runs, what it is given, and the few rules that keep it from breaking the box it shares. Nothing here obliges you to integrate with the other services on that box.
1. Hosting
One Debian server runs a set of Docker Compose services from ~/vanguard-stream/. You own exactly
one of them: the discord-bot container. You do not own the compose file, the reverse proxy (Caddy),
the firewall, the identity provider (Authentik), or the database server config. If you need any of
those changed, ask the admin with the exact change (see §6).
What you are given:
| Runtime | python:3.12-slim + ffmpeg + curl. Dependencies from app/requirements.txt, installed at image build (docker compose build discord-bot). |
| Your code | bind-mounted at /app from bot/app/. Not baked into the image. Edit, then docker compose restart discord-bot. |
| Entry point | the container runs python -u /app/main.py and restarts it if it exits. With no main.py it idles. |
| User | uid 1000 |
| Database | MariaDB, database vanguardbot, user bot, reachable at DB_HOST:DB_PORT. Yours alone. Other databases on the same server belong to other services; never touch them. |
| Persistent disk | /data, yours |
| Web UI | bind WEB_HOST:WEB_PORT (0.0.0.0:8000). The proxy publishes it as https://bot.<domain>/ behind login (§3). |
| Discord | DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, DISCORD_GUILD_ID. The bot user belongs to the community's existing Discord application. |
| Clock | TZ=America/New_York |
Environment variables
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN, DISCORD_GUILD_ID, DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD,
WEB_HOST, WEB_PORT, WEB_PUBLIC_URL, AUTH_HEADER_USER, AUTH_HEADER_GROUPS, AUTH_HEADER_EMAIL,
MEDIA_CLIPS, TZ. Secrets arrive only through env. Never write them to the repo, /data, or logs.
SQLAlchemy URL: mysql+pymysql://{DB_USER}:{DB_PASSWORD}@{DB_HOST}:{DB_PORT}/{DB_NAME} (async: mysql+aiomysql).
2. Process model
- One process, one asyncio loop: the Discord gateway client and the web server run together
(
discord.pyplusaiohttpor FastAPI via uvicorn's programmatic API). Do not spawn a second container. - Log to stdout. The admin reads
docker compose logs -f discord-bot. - On fatal misconfiguration (no token, DB unreachable after retries) log the reason and exit non-zero; the restart policy retries.
- Handle SIGTERM: close the gateway and the web server cleanly.
3. Web UI: login is handled outside your code
Every request to https://bot.<domain>/ passes through Caddy, which sends the user to Authentik
(Discord login) and, once authenticated, forwards the request to you with identity headers:
| header | content |
|---|---|
X-Authentik-Username |
the user's account name |
X-Authentik-Groups |
group names, separated by | or , — the community uses admins, editors, streamers; others may be added |
X-Authentik-Email, X-Authentik-Name, X-Authentik-Uid |
extras |
Rules:
- Implement no login page, no sessions, no passwords. Identity is the headers, per request.
- Port 8000 is loopback-only on the host, so the headers can be trusted. Still fail closed: a request without the username header gets 401.
- Authorize by group, read from the header each time. Don't cache roles in your DB.
- Serve under
/; the proxy does no path rewriting for this host. - Build absolute links from
WEB_PUBLIC_URL. - The Authentik username may differ from the Discord username. Use the header value as the user key; if you need the Discord snowflake, resolve it through your gateway client and cache it in your DB.
Until the admin creates the matching Authentik application, the hostname returns an error, never an
open page. Test against http://127.0.0.1:8000/ on the server with the headers set by hand.
4. Repository layout (recommended, not enforced)
bot/
AGENT.md, README.md this brief; the ops cheat-sheet (keep README current)
Dockerfile, entrypoint.sh admin-owned; ask before changing
app/
main.py config → migrations → gateway + web in one loop → clean shutdown
requirements.txt pin versions once past the prototype
config.py the only module that reads os.environ
bot/ discord.py client, cogs/ (one feature per cog), permission checks
web/ routes/, templates/, static/, auth.py (header → user/groups)
db/ SQLAlchemy models, session, alembic/ migrations (run at startup)
services/ the actual logic, shared by cogs and web; no Discord or HTTP types
tests/ pytest; must pass offline with no token
Slash commands scoped to the guild so they appear instantly. Prefer slash commands over reading message content; Message Content is a privileged intent, enable it only if you need it.
5. Shared ground on the box
/media/clipsis mounted read-write. It is the community's clip storage, organized as one folder per user. You may add files there; never modify, move or delete files you did not create (parts of it are mirrored from members' machines and will fight back). If you write a video, write<name>.partthen rename to<name>.mp4, and put a<name>.jsonbeside it with at least{"timestamp": "<UTC ISO-8601 creation time>", "source": "...", "uploader": "<discord username>"}. Other services on the box index that folder and read the sidecar. If you never touch this mount, none of this applies.- The same bot user is used by another service for REST calls (posting notices, reading scheduled events). Sharing a token is fine. Don't rename the bot or change its avatar; pick your own channels.
- Don't bind other ports, don't start other containers, don't write outside
/app,/data,/media/clips.
6. Working with the admin
- Source: push to the community Gitea,
ssh://git@git.<domain>:2222/vanguard/discord-bot.git. The admin deploys by pulling intobot/appand restarting. CI on thepythonrunner label runs your tests. - Need infra? Open a Gitea issue titled
infra: …stating the exact change: a new env var and why, a mount, a Caddy path that should skip login (e.g. a public webhook endpoint), a new database. Don't work around the proxy or the firewall. - Dependencies changed? Say so in the PR; the image must be rebuilt.
- Keep
README.mdupdated with every command, env var, and table you add.