TLDRkseid: Building a Discord Bot That Summarizes Chaos

Back in April 2025, I had a problem. I was part of a Discord server that moved at approximately the speed of chaos. Hundreds of messages in an hour. Step away for lunch and you'd return to a novel's worth of context you'd missed.

Most people would just accept FOMO as the cost of being in an active community. I'm not most people. I'm a developer with an API key and questionable judgment.

The Birth of TLDRkseid

The name came first, as all great terrible ideas do.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) + Darkseid (DC Comics' cosmic tyrant of doom) = TLDRkseid.

A bot that would summarize Discord conversations with the ruthless efficiency of a New God. No mercy for walls of text. No escape from conciseness.

Anti-life justifies my means.

(Look, when you're building side projects at midnight, the puns write themselves.)

What It Actually Does

TLDRkseid connects to OpenAI and summarizes channel conversations on demand. But I didn't want just a simple "summarize last 50 messages" button. That's boring. That's insufficient.

Instead, I built five depth levels:

The /tldr command accepts a depth parameter and optionally filters by user. Want to know what that one person who never stops posting was on about? Now you can find out in three bullet points instead of scrolling through their stream of consciousness.

/tldr depth:standard
/tldr depth:deep user:@ThatGuyWhoNeverStops

The "Someone Has To Pay For This" Problem

Here's the thing about OpenAI's API: it costs money. Not a lot per request, but when you're potentially processing thousands of messages for strangers on the internet, those pennies add up.

I had options:

1. Pay for it myself - Ha. No.
2. Make users bring their own API keys - Too much friction
3. Add a "please help me afford this" button - Dignity? Never heard of it.

I went with option 3.

Enter the BuyMeACoffee integration. Every summary includes a little footer showing the token cost and a gentle nudge toward supporting the bot. Something like:

"This summary used 1,247 tokens (~$0.0025). If TLDRkseid saved you time, consider buying me a coffee!"

Is it a little shameless? Yes. But it's also honest. API costs are real, and being transparent about them feels better than hiding behind a paywall or letting the bot die a quiet death when my wallet runs dry.

The alternative was limiting features to paid tiers, but that felt wrong for a utility bot. Everyone gets the same functionality. If people find value in it, some will chip in. If they don't, at least they can catch up on what they missed while making coffee.

The Technical Bits

For those who care (and if you're reading this blog, you probably do):

Stack:

• C# with .NET
• Discord.NET for the bot framework
• OpenAI API for summarization
• Entity Framework Core for data persistence
• Docker for deployment

Smart Features:

• Caching: Same message set = cached summary. No re-querying OpenAI for identical requests.
• Spam Protection: Rate limiting to prevent abuse. No, you can't /tldr every 30 seconds.
• Role-Based Access: Superusers can grant admin privileges. Admins can manage server settings.
• Cost Tracking: Running total of API spend, persisted to disk. For my own sanity/terror.

The summarization prompt is tuned for Discord's particular flavor of chaos:

"Extract meaningful insights, recurring themes, or noteworthy quotes. Format as 3-5 bullet points. If the conversation is casual or minimal, still provide useful output."

Temperature set to 0.7 for that balance between creativity and not-making-stuff-up. Max tokens capped at 300 so responses stay concise. You want a summary, not a second wall of text.

The Deployment Revelation

Here's where I learned something that might be obvious to Discord bot veterans but absolutely floored me:

Discord bots run as a single instance serving ALL servers.

I had naively assumed that when someone "added" my bot to their server, they were getting their own little copy. Like installing an app. Each server, its own deployment.

Wrong.

Every server that adds your bot connects to the same running instance. Your one bot process handles slash commands from Server A, Server B, Server C, and however many servers invite it.

This has implications:

1. Scalability matters from day one. Your bot better handle concurrent requests gracefully.
2. Your hosting bill is everyone's problem. More servers = more load = more cost.
3. Downtime affects everyone. Restart your bot? Every server loses access simultaneously.
4. Data isolation is YOUR responsibility. Nothing stops Server A's admin from accidentally seeing Server B's data if you mess up your queries.

I had to go back and make sure my database queries were properly scoped by guild ID. Not a mistake you want to make after launch.

Where I Landed (For Now)

I deployed to Railway. It's reasonably priced, handles Docker well, and got me from "working locally" to "working on the internet" without too much hair-pulling.

You can see the deployment link in the GitHub releases.

But I'm genuinely curious: Is Railway the right choice for this? Are there better options for hosting a Discord bot that needs to:

• Run 24/7
• Handle database connections
• Not cost a fortune at low-to-medium scale

I've heard good things about Fly.io, and I know some people run bots on Azure Container Instances or even cheap VPS providers. If you have opinions or experience, I'd love to hear them in the comments.

What's Next?

TLDRkseid works. It's been running. It summarizes things. The joke name gets occasional chuckles.

But it's not "released" in any meaningful way. I built it for my own server, realized it might be useful to others, and then got paralyzed by the questions:

• How do I handle support if it breaks?
• What happens when OpenAI changes their pricing?
• Do I need a privacy policy?
• Is anyone going to actually use this?

The code is open source. If you want to run your own instance, you can. If you want to contribute improvements, please do. And if you have advice on taking a side project from "works for me" to "works for everyone," I'm all ears.

Sometimes the best projects are the ones you build because a problem annoyed you enough to solve it. TLDRkseid exists because Discord moves too fast and I refuse to miss jokes.

Darkseid Is.

TLDRkseid Summarizes.

Have you built a Discord bot? Run into the "single instance serving everyone" realization? Found a hosting solution you love? Let me know in the comments - I'm genuinely looking for advice here.