Self-hosting

The IDE runs your bot only while it’s open. To keep the bot online, copy the project to a server. The server runs the same engine as the IDE, @makecord/runtime, so the bot behaves the same way.

A project is ready to deploy as it is: it already has a package.json, a Dockerfile and a docker-compose.yml.

Before you deploy

Remove devGuildId from makecord.json if the bot should work in every server. Global commands can take a while to show up in Discord.
Make sure every secret the bot needs is listed in .env.example.

Copy the project folder to the server, for example with git clone or scp. Node.js 22.12 or newer must be installed.
Create .env from the example and fill in the values:
Terminal window
```
cp .env.example .env
nano .env
```
Install and start:
Terminal window
```
npm install
npm start
```

npm start stops when you close the terminal. Use a process manager to keep it running and restart it after a reboot, for example pm2: pm2 start npm --name my-bot -- start.

Copy the project folder to the server.
Create .env from the example and fill in the values:
Terminal window
```
cp .env.example .env
```
Build and start in the background:
Terminal window
```
docker compose up -d
```

The compose file restarts the bot unless you stop it. Follow the logs with docker compose logs -f.

On a server the runtime prints readable logs instead of talking to the IDE:

19:42:07 INFO  ● ready — My bot#4821 is online in 3 servers
19:42:08 INFO  Registered 2 commands (global): greet, ping

Updating

Your flows: copy the changed *.flow.json files to the server and restart the bot.
The engine: run npm update @makecord/runtime (or rebuild the Docker image) when a new version comes out, for example after a Discord API change.