Auto-responses are the workhorse of a busy server: the FAQ answer that fires before a mod has to type it for the hundredth time. But a naive "word X → reply Y" quickly becomes either too narrow to catch real questions or too noisy to live with. CloudMod's auto-responses give you the controls to land in the middle.
Match modes: substring, word, wildcard, regex
Not every trigger should match the same way. CloudMod offers four modes:
- Substring — fires if the text appears anywhere. Simple, but greedy.
- Word — matches whole words only, so "cat" doesn't trigger on "category".
- Wildcard — patterns like
how do I *catch a whole family of phrasings without writing a regex. - Regex — full power for the cases that need it.
Pick the loosest mode that still avoids false positives. Wildcard is the sweet spot for most FAQ triggers.
Variables make replies feel personal
A reply that says "Hi {user}, welcome to {server}!" reads far better than a generic blurb. CloudMod fills {user}, {server} and {channel} at send time. Mentions stay disabled by design, so a variable never turns into an accidental ping storm — the name shows as text, not a notification.
Cooldowns keep it calm
Without a cooldown, a single chatty trigger can spam a channel. Set a per-response cooldown in seconds and the bot stays quiet between fires, even if ten people hit the trigger in a row. For a help channel, 30–60 seconds is usually plenty.
Channel scope: right answer, right place
A "read the rules" response belongs in onboarding channels, not in your off-topic chat. Restrict a response to specific channels and it only listens where it makes sense. Leave the scope empty and it works everywhere.
Random replies avoid the robot feel
For light, social triggers you can give a response several alternatives — the bot picks one at random each time. A greeting that varies feels alive; the same canned line on every "gm" feels like a machine.
A note on safety
Regex is powerful and, written carelessly, can hang a bot on a crafted input (a "catastrophic backtracking" attack). CloudMod compiles every pattern through a guarded pipeline with a hard timeout, so a bad pattern fails safe instead of freezing the bot. You get the flexibility without the footgun.
Putting it together
Start with a wildcard trigger, add a variable or two, set a 30-second cooldown and scope it to your help channel. That single response will already do more — and annoy less — than a dozen blunt substring rules.