Set up The Claw in five minutes

Prerequisites

What you need

• A Discord server where you have owner or admin permissions.
• A browser to access the dashboard at www.theclaw.gg.

Walkthrough

1. Sign in and install the bot

   Go to www.theclaw.gg and sign in with Discord. From the dashboard, choose your server and complete the Discord OAuth install. The bot needs View Channel and Read Message History so it can sync the channels you expose.

   Private channels: The bot can only see channels that @everyone can see. If you want the API to include channels with restricted permissions, grant the bot’s role access to those channels — or give it Administrator to access everything.

2. Review API access

   After installation, the bot syncs your server's message history into isolated storage. API access is enabled by default once setup completes, so your keys can start querying right away. You can disable it anytime from the API tab if you want to pause access while keeping sync running.

3. Configure channel controls

   In the Channels tab, review channel exposure before enabling API access. All channels are included by default, so exclude any channel that should not be available to your API consumers.

4. Issue your first key

   Create a key from the dashboard or have a member run /theclaw register in Discord. Member sign-up requires the bot to be installed and API access to be enabled. Each key is bound to one server and one identity.

5. Make your first API call

   Query your server data with the key:

   Bash Copy

   curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer tk_live_YOUR_KEY" \
     "https://api.theclaw.gg/v1/messages/search?q=hello&limit=5" | jq .

   Replace tk_live_YOUR_KEY with the key you created. The response contains matching messages from your enabled channels.

Next steps

Keep going