💬 Autodelete in Forums & Media Channels

Forums and media channels don’t hold messages directly — everything lives in posts (which are technically threads). Forum Setup manages autodelete rules for all posts of a forum at once: new ones automatically, existing ones too after confirmation.

✨ Premium: Forum-wide setup is currently a Premium feature while this rollout is being scaled up carefully.

Creating a forum config

1. Run /forum-setup and pick the forum or media channel
   • Why a picker? Discord forums have no message input, so commands can’t be run “inside” a forum - you select it from a list instead
2. The bot shows how many posts it currently knows about and automatically includes posts (the forum’s Include Threads — a forum config without post coverage would do nothing)
3. Create the config as usual (modes, limit, filters…)
4. Changes go live after the usual one-minute buffer

From then on:

• ✅ New posts are covered the moment they’re created
• ✅ Posts that get unarchived resume automatically
• ✅ Filters work per message inside each post (e.g. only messages without attachments)
• 🗑️ Optionally, old messages in existing posts are deleted when you confirm the backfill prompt

Per-post exceptions

Running /setup inside a single post manages just that post. If the forum has a config covering posts, the setup menu shows a “managed by parent” hint — a post-specific config then applies in addition to the forum-wide one.

Deleting the whole posts too?

Autodelete deletes messages inside posts. If you want posts themselves to be archived, locked or deleted (e.g. “archive support threads 7 days after the last answer, delete after 30”), that’s a separate feature: Post Rules, managed from the same /forum-setup menu via “Post Rules”.

Permissions

• Base: View Channel, Read Message History, Manage Messages (as everywhere)
• Manage Threads is requested for the feature family: it’s what lets the bot see private threads without an invite and is required for locking/deleting posts

More: Bot Permissions

Limitations (by Discord design)

• Only posts the bot can see are covered. Public forum posts: always. Private threads elsewhere: only if the bot was invited or has Manage Threads; private threads the bot can’t see are fundamentally invisible — there is no API for them, no matter the bot
• Archived posts that predate the setup are discovered whenever that’s technically possible (public listings, or private listings with Manage Threads)
• Messages older than 14 days can’t be deleted — Discord-wide restriction

Troubleshooting

New posts are covered, old ones aren’t → You declined the “delete old messages” prompt on creation. Toggle Include Threads off and on to be re-asked.

A post stopped getting cleaned after being archived → Nothing to do — as soon as it’s unarchived, coverage resumes automatically.

Some posts never get cleaned, ever → If those posts are private threads (not possible inside actual forums, but possible in text channels): invite the bot to them, or grant Manage Threads. The bot can’t exist-cover what it can’t see.

See also: Post Rules · Include Threads · Category Setup