Automations

An automation is one sentence:

When someone does X, if all of these are true, do these things.

Rules run independently per trigger. Up to 50 rules per server.

Rule basics

Rule name

1–60 characters · required

Internal label. Name it after what it does — Welcome role, No links for new members — because in six months the list is the only documentation you have.

Rule enabled

Default true

Turn a single rule off without deleting it. Useful for seasonal rules and for isolating which rule is causing something.

Cooldown

0–86400 seconds · default 0

Per-user re-trigger cooldown. 0 means no cooldown. A schedule has no user, so there the cooldown applies to the rule itself.

Triggers

The event that starts the rule. Exactly one per rule.

A member…

• Sends a message
• Edits a message
• Deletes a message
• Clicks an automation button
• Adds a reaction
• Receives a role
• Loses a role
• Joins a voice channel
• Leaves a voice channel
• Creates a thread
• Joins the server

Or, with nobody acting at all:

• At a set time (schedule)

Trigger filters

Optional narrowing applied before conditions are evaluated — cheaper and clearer than expressing the same thing as a condition.

Channel filters accept category ids too — one category id covers every channel inside it.

Schedule

A schedule rule runs on the clock instead of in response to a member. It takes a five-field cron expression — minute hour day-of-month month day-of-week, with *, a,b, a-b and */n supported and names like MON or shorthands like @daily not — and the IANA time zone it is read in (Europe/Berlin; UTC when empty). The editor offers presets (every hour, every 6 hours, daily at 20:00, every Monday at 20:00, first of the month at 09:00) and previews the next runs. Resolution is one minute.

If Cloudy is briefly busy or restarting, a run that fell due in the last ten minutes is caught up — once, not once per missed minute. When the clocks go back, a fixed time such as 30 2 * * * fires on the first 02:30 only; a rule that repeats through the hour (*/5 * * * *) keeps running in real time. When the clocks go forward, a time that does not exist that night is skipped.

Because nobody acted, a schedule has no member and no message: the role, moderation, DM, coin and XP actions and every message action except send a message are unavailable, and send a message needs an explicit channel. Conditions never pass on a schedule either — there is no user or channel to check — so leave the list empty.

Conditions

All conditions must pass (logical AND). Leave the list empty to always run. Up to 20 conditions.

Text matching ignores case. Limits: up to 100 channels, 50 roles, 100 user ids, 100 phrases (1–200 characters each) per condition.

Actions

Executed in order. A failing action is skipped and the rest still run. Between 1 and 15 actions per rule.

Roles

Moderation

Messages

Message content supports the usual placeholders. {server.memberCount} is written in the server's language (1,234 / 1.234), on a schedule too.

Buttons

A send a message action can attach up to five buttons:

The button id is what a button-click trigger matches on. That is the loop that makes automations interactive: rule A posts a message with a button called apply, rule B triggers on a button click filtered to apply and gives out a role.

Economy & XP

Coin actions write straight into the member's Economy balance. XP actions write into Leveling and fail while that plugin is disabled.

Worked examples

Auto-role on join

When:  Joins the server
If:    (nothing)
Do:    Give these roles to the user → @Member

Suggestion threads

When:  Sends a message
       Only in these channels → #suggestions
If:    (nothing)
Do:    React to the message with these emojis → 👍 👎
       Create a thread from the message → "Discussion"

No links until level 5

When:  Sends a message
If:    The user has none of these roles → @Level 5
       The message contains one of these words or phrases → http:// https://
Do:    Delete the message
       Send the user a DM → "Links are unlocked at level 5."

A self-service application button

Rule 1
When:  Joins the server
Do:    Send a message → #welcome, "Want to apply?" + button id "apply"

Rule 2
When:  Clicks a button
       Only these button ids → apply
Do:    Give these roles to the user → @Applicant
       Reply to the message → "You now have @Applicant — check #applications."

Weekly reminder

When:  At a set time → 0 20 * * 1, Europe/Berlin
Do:    Send a message → #general, "Community night starts in an hour!"

Behaviour notes

• Rules are independent. Two rules on the same trigger both run; there is no priority or stop-first.
• Bots never trigger rules — Cloudy's own messages and reactions included.
• Deletes a message fires only for messages Cloudy still had in memory. For an older message Discord does not say who wrote it — it could be a bot's, a webhook's or Cloudy's own — so its deletion triggers nothing.
• A rule that re-triggers itself keeps running until the server hits its budget of 30 rule executions per minute; anything beyond that is dropped for the rest of the minute. Use cooldowns and channel filters rather than relying on the budget.
• Actions the bot lacks permission for fail and are skipped — nothing is shown in Discord — and the rest of the rule continues. Check your permissions if an action never seems to happen.
• Role actions are subject to the role hierarchy: Cloudy cannot grant a role above its own. Such roles and managed roles (bot and booster roles) are skipped silently.
• Saved changes reach the bot within about a minute.
• Member-join rules do not fire for a member the raid or alt protection just quarantined, kicked or banned.
• Role-gained / role-lost rules also fire for members who were inactive for a while: Cloudy remembers a member's roles for 7 days after it last saw them join or change roles. The first role change of a member who was quiet for longer — or whom Cloudy has never seen since the rule was created — can still be missed.
• Repost message links attachments larger than 10 MB instead of re-uploading them, and shortens text to Discord's 2000 characters.
• Add/remove coins does nothing while the Economy plugin is switched off (or not licensed) — like the XP actions with Leveling.