Nous Research Discord Archive

Periodically polls selected channels in the Nous Research Discord and appends new messages to per-channel text files in archives/. Runs every 6 hours via GitHub Actions.

Files

• archives/<channel>.txt — append-only message log per channel
• archives/state.json — last-seen message ID per channel (used for incremental fetches)

Setup

1. Create a Discord bot

   • https://discord.com/developers/applications → New Application → Bot
   • Enable the Message Content Intent (privileged)
   • Copy the bot token

2. Invite the bot to the server

   • OAuth2 → URL Generator → scopes: bot, permissions: View Channels, Read Message History
   • Send the URL to a server admin

3. Get channel IDs

   • Discord settings → Advanced → Developer Mode ON
   • Right-click each channel → Copy Channel ID

4. Configure the repo

   • Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions
     • Secret: DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN = the bot token
     • Variable: DISCORD_CHANNELS = comma-separated channel IDs (e.g. 123,456)

5. First run

   • Actions tab → "Archive Discord channels" → Run workflow
   • Initial run downloads full history per channel — can take a while.

Local testing

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install requests
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN=... DISCORD_CHANNELS=123,456 python scripts/archive.py

Notes

• Threads and forum posts are intentionally skipped.
• Edits and deletes after archival are NOT reflected (polling-only design).
• Attachments are recorded as CDN URLs; the files themselves are not downloaded.