Go to Discord Developer Portal
Create a new application
Go to Bot → Add Bot
Enable these Privileged Intents:
- Message Content Intent
- Server Members Intent (optional)
Copy the bot token

2. Invite the Bot

Generate an invite URL with these permissions:

Read Messages/View Channels
Send Messages
Read Message History

https://discord.com/api/oauth2/authorize?client_id=YOUR_CLIENT_ID&permissions=68608&scope=bot

3. Configure Environment

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your values

4. Run

Direct:

pip install -r requirements.txt
python discord_tldr.py

Docker:

docker build -t discord-tldr .
docker run --env-file .env discord-tldr

Docker Compose:

version: '3.8'
services:
  tldr:
    build: .
    env_file: .env
    restart: unless-stopped

Commands

Command	Description
`!tldr`	Generate summary now (uses default lookback)
`!tldr 24`	Generate summary for last 24 hours
`!tldr-status`	Check bot status and schedule

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
`DISCORD_TOKEN`	required	Bot token
`DISCORD_GUILD_ID`	required	Server ID
`DISCORD_TLDR_CHANNEL_ID`	required	Channel for summaries
`LLM_PROVIDER`	`anthropic`	`anthropic` or `openai`
`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`	-	Claude API key
`OPENAI_API_KEY`	-	GPT API key
`SUMMARY_HOURS`	`6,13,22`	Hours to post (24h format)
`LOOKBACK_HOURS`	`8`	Hours to look back
`EXCLUDE_CHANNELS`	-	Channel IDs to skip

Example Output

📋 **TLDR Summary** (Jan 25, 2026 - 6:00 AM)

Quick catch-up: Active discussions about the new API launch and some 
spirited debate about code review practices.

**#general**
• Team welcomed new member @sarah
• Discussion about Q1 roadmap priorities
• Decided to postpone the demo to next week

**#dev**
• Merged the authentication refactor (PR #142)
• Debugging session for the webhook timeout issue
• @jake will investigate the memory leak

**#random**
• Friday lunch plans: Thai food won the vote
• Shared some quality memes about merge conflicts

**Action Items:**
- @jake: Investigate memory leak by EOD Monday
- @team: Review roadmap doc before Wednesday standup

Hosting Options

VPS: Any cheap VPS (DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr)
Railway/Render: Easy container deployment
Home server: Run in Docker with auto-restart
Raspberry Pi: Works great for small servers

License

MIT