Media archive

Status: design approved 2026-09-16. The engine, the slopbot backend, the scrape media command, the /api/media/* routes, storage limits with retention, the Settings group, the MCP tools, and the byte downloader are implemented (C3-C8, C10). The Media and Bot tabs are C6. Live-verified:

slopbot on the test channel: 17 messages (4 images, 13 videos), 0 errors.
slopbot on a larger channel: 11 pages, 1088 messages (96 images, 1 GIF, 203 videos), 0 errors.
puppet on a group DM and a 1:1 DM: done, 0 errors, backend puppet.

Preview caching is implemented and live-verified (2 WebP thumbs served over the thumb route). Remaining: a 429 observation on a very large walk. Checkpoints live in CURRENT.md.

The media archive saves the media history of a channel. A trusted user runs scrape media in the channel. The daemon walks the history through a scrape backend and indexes every image, GIF, video, and audio item into a per-scrape database. Two new Web UI tabs expose it: Media browses the archive, Bot controls slopbot and the storage settings.

The feature lives in media-scrape/ and touches the daemon at three points: the Web UI route mount, the MCP tool registration, and the message shape in the core.

Command

@puppet scrape media            # index links (default)
@puppet scrape media download   # also download attachment bytes
@puppet scrape media status
@puppet scrape media stop

The target is the channel the command is sent in. Group DMs and guild channels work.
The command needs the trusted tier. stop and download needs admin.
scrape media with no argument re-runs the last scrape state; near the storage limit it turns into the confirmation (see Retention).
The reply follows the response policy. The job runs in the background.

Backends

The walk runs through one of two backends. The daemon picks automatically; a scrape can pin one.

	slopbot (bot account)	puppet (user account)
Guild channels	Yes. Preferred.	Fallback when slopbot is not in the guild.
Group DMs and DMs	No. Discord bots cannot see them.	Yes. The only option.
Transport	Official bot REST via discord.js	The validated core bridge (`message.fetch`)
Rate limits	Documented, per-route buckets, handled by discord.js	Undocumented; daemon pacing and backoff
Requires the Electron client	No	Yes

See slopbot.md and media-scraper.md.

Storage

Runtime data lives under media-scrape/db/, ignored by git and configurable with VESKSLOP_MEDIA_DB_DIR. Each scrape is self-contained:

media-scrape/db/
  <scrape-id>/                 # <channel-id>-<YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS>
    scrape.json                # channel, guild, mode, state, cursor, counters
    index.db                   # SQLite metadata index
    media/                     # downloaded bytes, only in download mode
      <sha256>.<ext>
    thumbs/                    # cached Discord-hosted image previews
      <sha256>.webp

The database is an index. It holds the scrape state, the messages seen, the media items, and the link between a media item and its source messages. Source channel, author, and timestamp are indexed so filters can be added later without a re-scrape.
Storage uses node:sqlite (experimental in Node 22, prints a warning). If its API changes, better-sqlite3 is the fallback; it needs a native build, so that switch is an owner install.
The file name in media/ is the SHA-256 of the bytes, never the original name. The original name is metadata.
Deleting a scrape is deleting its directory. Nothing is shared between scrapes.

Index versus download

links is the default. The archive stores the Discord CDN URL and the metadata. Nothing large is downloaded.
download fetches attachment bytes into media/, one file at a time, hash-addressed. Embed rows are never download targets. The Media tab prefers the local file when one exists, so the archive survives CDN URL expiry.
Third-party embeds are never downloaded as media: YouTube, Instagram, X, TikTok, and every other embed stays a link. Its thumbnail is cached (below); the video itself is never fetched.
Previews are cached small (WebP, 320px) in thumbs/ after every walk, in both modes: Discord hosted images and GIFs, and third-party embed thumbnails (YouTube, X, TikTok, and so on), so the grid does not depend on expiring CDN links. Previews count toward the storage limit.
Every item records who posted it, when, and its dimensions: author_id, author_name, posted_at, width, height, and aspect_ratio. In download mode a missing resolution is filled in with ffprobe after the file lands.
Discord attachment URLs are signed and expire in about a day. In links mode an expired URL is refreshed by re-fetching its message; in download mode the bytes are caught before expiry.

Media classification

Kind	Sources
`image`	png, jpg, jpeg, webp, bmp, avif attachments; image embeds; stickers
`gif`	gif attachments; gifv, Tenor, Giphy embeds
`video`	mp4, webm, mov, mkv attachments; YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch clip, Streamable embeds; forwarded video
`audio`	mp3, m4a, ogg, wav, flac attachments; Discord voice messages

Retention and limits

The storage limit covers everything under the DB root: databases, downloads, and previews.

Setting	Default	Meaning
`media.limitBytes`	30 GiB	Combined size limit
`media.warnPercent`	90	Warn threshold
`media.overrunPercent`	5	No-delete allowance above the limit

Behavior:

At or above the warn threshold, a new scrape media command is refused and the reply shows the usage. Re-running the same command within 2 minutes accepts. The API mirror is confirm: true on POST /api/media/scrape (otherwise 409 MEDIA_LIMIT).
At or above 100% the oldest completed scrapes are marked pending-delete.
Above limit + 5% overrun, marked scrapes are deleted oldest first until the usage fits.
No data is deleted inside the 5% overrun band. The hover info (small i beside the limit field) explains this.

The planning is a pure function (media-scrape/src/retention.ts) with tests. Only done, failed, and paused scrapes are ever marked; a running scrape is untouched. Deletion removes the scrape directory and forgets it in the engine.

Clean media in Settings lists exactly what will be deleted, with sizes and counts, and states that deletion is irreversible. The delete button is disabled for a 5 second countdown.

Web UI

Media tab: filter chips (All, Images, GIFs, Videos, Audio), and filters for source (any, attachments, stickers, embeds), source channel, poster, aspect ratio (Vertical, 1:1, 4:3, 16:9, 21:9, Other), resolution (SD, HD, FHD, QHD, 4K+, Unknown), and a posted-date range (from/to). Grid with lazy loading; previews come from the cache, then the local file, then the CDN; each tile's tooltip shows the poster and posted time. A scrape strip shows live progress with Stop. New scrape… opens a popup with Server and Group chat trees (servers expand to channels; each row has Links and Download), and History lists each scrape with its start time, duration, pages, messages, media counts, bytes, files, and previews. The view fills the window below the header and the call strip.
Bot tab: slopbot connection state, the scrape queue, and the storage limit with a usage bar. The bar is segmented and colour coded by media kind (images, GIFs, video, audio, other) plus the database overhead.
Settings gains one collapsible group. Its name is Bot while the bot path is active, and Media if the bot path is removed. It holds the limit field with the info tooltip, the usage bar (segmented by image, GIF, video, audio, and other), and the clean button with its 5 second countdown.
Mobile is out of scope for now.

MCP

The agent can query the archive and start scrapes with MCP tools. The hooks are designed in media-mcp.md and implemented at checkpoint C8.

Security

The command follows the existing trust rules and is written to the action log.
The slopbot token lives in the state dir or the environment, never in the repo. See slopbot.md.
Media is served from disk only when the sniffed type matches the extension allowlist. Paths are hashes, never user input.
The Web UI has no authentication. LAN or Tailscale only, as before.
This automates a user account. The account should be one the owner can afford to lose.

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