Features overview

Mellow is an AI-powered mental health companion for Discord. It runs with no privileged intents, so it only sees message content in DMs, in messages that mention or reply to it, and in text you explicitly hand it through a command or the "Check on this message" context menu.

AI support

Conversation

• Context-aware responses - Mellow can use your recent conversation history for continuity, if you allow context logging.
• Personality customization - six styles:
  • Gentle - soft, empathetic, nurturing
  • Supportive - encouraging and motivational
  • Direct - clear and straightforward
  • Playful - light-hearted and engaging
  • Professional - structured and measured
  • Encouraging - positive reinforcement
• Powered by Anthropic Claude - the model, system prompt, temperature, and token limit are configurable by the bot operator. The default model is claude-haiku-4-5.

Time-aware behaviour

• Late-night companion mode - activates during late hours based on your timezone, with calmer responses.
• Morning encouragement - gentler, more encouraging tone in the early morning.
• Timezone adaptation - set your timezone with /preferences set or /timemode.

Crisis screening

• Graded analysis - text you share is classified as none, low, medium, high, or critical concern.
• Constrained responses - for high or critical results, Mellow leads with a fixed, reviewed safety message and hotline resources rather than free-form AI text.
• Where it runs - /crisis analyze, the "Check on this message" context menu, DMs, and messages that mention or reply to Mellow. Per-message screening on your own messages is opt-in via /preferences set crisis_detection:true.
• Moderator alerts - when enabled for a server, high-risk situations notify the configured alert channel. Passive detection alerts moderators only; it does not contact the user.

Mental health tracking

Mood check-ins

• 25+ moods - each with an emoji, logged with /checkin.
• Intensity - a 1-5 rating.
• Activity and note - optional context fields.

Insights

• /insights - trends and summaries from your check-in history.
• /profile - your overall activity and journey.

Reminders

• Configurable interval - minutes between reminders, set with /preferences set checkin_interval:.
• Timezone-aware - reminders respect your local time.
• Opt-in - toggle with /preferences set reminders:.

Coping tools

/coping <tool> provides:

• Breathing - a guided breathing pattern, optionally adapted to a feeling: you give.
• Grounding - 5-4-3-2-1 sensory grounding.
• Affirmations - supportive statements.
• Challenge - a small, doable action.
• Distraction - healthy distraction ideas.
• Music - calming listening suggestions.
• Gratitude - log or view things you are grateful for (item:).
• Journal - write (write:) or delete (delete:) private entries, encrypted at rest.
• Plan - view, set (set:), or clear (clear:) a personal coping plan.
• Streaks - view your coping tool usage streaks.
• Toolbox - manage favourite tools (add:, remove:).

Private expression

Ghost letters

• /ghostletter write: - write an unsent letter to get feelings out.
• Private - only you can read your ghost letters.
• Encrypted - stored encrypted at rest.

Privacy and safety controls

Per-user

• context_logging - whether messages are stored for AI context.
• crisis_detection - whether your own messages are screened.
• crisis_dms - whether Mellow may DM you crisis support.
• /context view - see what is stored; /context clear - delete stored conversation history.

Per-guild (admins)

• /guildsettings set - toggle features (check_ins, ghost_letters, crisis_alerts, system_logs, context_logging), set channels (checkin_channel, mod_alert_channel, mod_log_channel, system_channel), a moderator_role, and a language.
• /guildcontext - set and view guild-wide AI context and privacy behaviour.
• /guilddebug - view Mellow's stored configuration and status for the server.

Server settings and safety

Mellow is not a moderation bot. It has no auto-moderation, keyword filtering, or ban/kick commands. Server safety features are limited to:

• Crisis alerts - optional notifications to a moderator channel.
• System logs - optional operational logging (gateway, guild join/leave, command usage).

Information commands

/help, /about, /ping, /support, /privacy, /docs, /source, /version, /stats, /invite.

Fun and breaks

/joke, /compliment, /trivia, /wouldyourather (each takes an optional topic:), /wordgame (type:, difficulty:), and /memegen (template:, topic:).

Technical

• Language - Go 1.25+, using the disgo Discord library (interaction-first, no privileged intents).
• Data - PostgreSQL via pgx, queries generated with sqlc, schema managed with versioned migrations (golang-migrate, embedded and applied on startup).
• Encryption - sensitive fields (conversation content, check-in notes, ghost letters, journal entries, crisis details, feedback, reports) are encrypted per-field with AES-256-GCM.
• HTTP API - a small API exposes health, stats, testimonials, chat, and feedback endpoints. See the
  API reference

  API Reference

  Mellow's HTTP API - endpoints, authentication, and rate limits.

  .
• Sharding - automatic shard count, with global command registration and a private guild registry for owner commands.

Getting started with features

For users

1. /preferences set - customize personality, timezone, and reminders.
2. /checkin - start mood tracking.
3. /coping - explore coping tools.
4. /ghostletter write: - private expression.
5. /profile and /insights - see your progress.

For administrators

1. /guildsettings view - review defaults.
2. /guildsettings set - configure channels and features.
3. /guildcontext - set guild-wide AI context.
4. /guilddebug - verify configuration.

For developers

1. Review the source at GitHub.
2. See the
   self-hosting

   Installation

   Build and run Mellow from source.

   and
   technical

   Technical Documentation Index

   Technical resources for Mellow developers and contributors.

   docs.
3. Report issues or open a pull request on GitHub.