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Self-hosting Rawrbot lets you run your own instance with your own bot token, giving you full control over the bot and its configuration. You’ll need Python 3.12 or newer, a Discord bot application created through the Discord Developer Portal, and optionally Spotify API credentials if you want to use the Spotify-related commands.

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Prerequisites

Before you start, make sure you have the following:
  • Python 3.12 or newer — cogs/moderation.py uses nested f-string syntax (such as f"{"" if ... else "s"}") that was introduced in Python 3.12. Earlier versions will fail to parse the file at import time.
  • A Discord account with access to the Discord Developer Portal, where you will create a bot application and obtain a token.
  • Git — for cloning the repository from GitHub.
  • yt-dlp and ffprobe — only required if you intend to use the /upload command. These are not listed in requirements.txt and must be installed separately on your system. Note that the /upload command hardcodes the ffprobe path as c:/windows/ffprobe.exe, making it Windows-specific in its current form.

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Installation

1

Clone the repository

Clone the project from GitHub and navigate into the project directory:
git clone https://github.com/Flyingbacen/Discord-rawrbot.git
cd Discord-rawrbot
2

Install Python dependencies

Install the required Python packages using pip:
pip install -r requirements.txt
This installs three packages as declared in requirements.txt:
  • aiohttp — async HTTP client used for web requests
  • discord.py — the Discord API wrapper the bot is built on
  • translate — used by the /translate command
3

Create config.json

Copy config_EXAMPLE.json to config.json in the project root and fill in your values:
config.json
{
  "token": "YOUR_BOT_TOKEN_HERE",
  "spotify": {
    "spotifyClientID": "YOUR_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID",
    "spotifyClientSecret": "YOUR_SPOTIFY_CLIENT_SECRET"
  },
  "webhook": "YOUR_DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL"
}
  • token — your Discord bot token from the Developer Portal (see the next section).
  • spotify.spotifyClientID / spotifyClientSecret — credentials from the Spotify Developer Dashboard. Required for /searchspotify and /convertsonglink.
  • webhook — a Discord webhook URL used for internal logging. You can create one in any server channel via Channel Settings → Integrations → Webhooks.
4

Run the bot

Start the bot process:
python main.py
When the bot is ready, you will see Ready! printed to the terminal. The bot will set its Discord status to Idle with activity “Listening to your commands”.

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Bot Application Setup

If you do not yet have a Discord bot application, follow these steps in the Developer Portal:
1

Create a new application

Go to https://discord.com/developers/applications and click New Application. Give it a name (e.g. “Rawrbot”) and confirm.
2

Generate a bot token

Navigate to the Bot tab in the left sidebar. Click Reset Token, confirm the action, and copy the token that appears. Paste it into the "token" field in your config.json. Keep this token secret — anyone with it can control your bot.
3

Enable the Message Content Intent

Still on the Bot tab, scroll down to Privileged Gateway Intents and enable Message Content Intent. The bot’s main.py sets intents.message_content = True, so Discord must have this enabled on the application side as well.
4

Generate an invite URL

Go to OAuth2 → URL Generator. Under Scopes, select bot. Under Bot Permissions, enter or select the permissions that add up to 2147486720. Copy the generated URL at the bottom of the page and use it to invite the bot to your server.

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Keeping the Bot Running

Running python main.py directly in a terminal works for development, but the bot process will stop when you close the terminal. For longer-running deployments, consider one of these approaches:
  • screen or tmux (Linux/macOS) — launch the bot inside a persistent terminal session that survives disconnects: 
    screen -S rawrbot
python main.py
# Detach with Ctrl+A, D
  • pm2 — a Node.js-based process manager that works with Python processes and auto-restarts on crash: 
    pm2 start main.py --interpreter python3 --name rawrbot
pm2 save
  • VPS or cloud VM — running the bot on a remote machine (e.g. a DigitalOcean Droplet or AWS EC2 instance) keeps it online independently of your local machine.
For a production-style Linux setup, consider creating a systemd service unit for the bot. A systemd service will start automatically on system boot and restart the process if it crashes, without requiring any manual intervention.

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Syncing Slash Commands

After the bot starts for the first time, its slash commands may not appear in Discord immediately. The /sync command calls tree.sync() to push all registered application commands to Discord’s API. This command is owner-only — it checks interaction.user.id against the allowedUsers list in cogs/general.py.
The owner user ID (717471432816459840) is hardcoded in cogs/general.py (in bigDict["sync"]["extras"]["allowedUsers"]), cogs/moderation.py (in the /timeout command handler), and cogs/utility.py (in the /upload command handler). If you are self-hosting, you must replace these IDs with your own Discord user ID in all three files before running the bot, otherwise you will not be able to use owner-only commands.
To find your Discord user ID, enable Developer Mode in Discord’s settings (Advanced → Developer Mode), then right-click your username anywhere in Discord and select Copy User ID.

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