MadHoney doesn't try to recognize spam. It wires up your server so only a bot would ever trigger the trap. Humans click Verify, read a captcha, and get in. Bots post in the decoy channel and get banned, messages wiped, before anyone wakes up.
A spam bot never posts just once. It blasts every channel it can reach and tries to ping @everyone on the way through. Every message lights up that channel with an unread marker, and here's the part that stings: ban the bot and delete the spam, and those unread dots usually stay. You come back to a whole server flagged with "new messages" for spam nobody should have seen. MadHoney's job is to stop that before it starts - to catch the bot in one place, before it can touch the rest of your server.
Every channel is hidden behind a verified role. A new account sees exactly two things: your rules channel… and one decoy.
Humans click Verify, read an image captcha, type the code, and the whole server unlocks. Takes about ten seconds. No DMs, no third-party site.
The decoy is named like a real channel (#general-2) and it's the only place an unverified account can post. Spam bots post everywhere they can, so they post there first. Instant ban, plus their last 7 days of messages get deleted. Verified humans never even see it.
A spam bot doesn't pick targets. It dumps its message in every channel it can see and pings @everyone if it can. Gate everything behind the verified role and the only door left open is the honeypot.
Name the decoy like a normal channel (general-2, chat-2) and an indiscriminate bot walks straight in. It looks like just another place to spam.
The honeypot's only content is an image. A human reads "don't post here" and backs off; a bot can't parse a picture, so it posts anyway and trips the trap.
The verified role hides the honeypot from everyone who passed the captcha. Real members never even see the channel, so the only thing that ever lands in it is a bot.
MadHoney generates the hazard banner that sits pinned in the honeypot: your headline, body text, colors, fonts, even your community's logo. Design it with /madhoney banner or in the dashboard. The one you're looking at is rendered live by the bot.
/madhoney setup walks you through role and channel pickers, then /madhoney deploy grandfathers existing members, posts the panels, and gates your channels. There's a dry-run before anything changes.
Every ban is reported to a staff channel: who, when, and what they posted. One-click Unban button if a curious human tripped the wire.
Every honeypot catch, across every server, lands on one list. Opt in and known spammers are banned the moment they join yours (or all at once with Ban from List). Opt out anytime - your own catches stay yours. An Undo removes a user from the list everywhere.
The trap fires on where a message was posted, never on what it says. No external database, no analytics. Staff and owners are always exempt.
Log in with Discord and manage any server where you have Manage Server: config, verify message, banner designer, deploy actions, and the ban log.
Read it, fork it, self-host it. One Node process, three files of state. github.com/nomadsgalaxy/MadHoney · OCL v1.1 + SWAtt.
/madhoney setup and pick the role, your rules channel, the decoy, and an optional staff log channel./madhoney deploy and click through: grandfather → post panels → gate (dry-run, then apply).MadHoney is free to add and free to run. No paywalls, no premium tier, nothing locked behind an upgrade. Running the bot and dashboard does cost real money for servers and hosting, though. If MadHoney keeps your community clean, chipping in helps cover those costs and keeps it free for everyone.
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