Bring members in, then keep the roster honest.

1. Point recruitment at the right channels admin

   Open /settings → Recruitment. This screen is only about where things go: the applications forum (create a fresh staff-only one, or pick a forum you already have), the board channel where the public Apply board should live, and the board accent colour. The board-channel picker is set-only — choosing a channel records the destination and posts nothing. Nothing is published until you press Post the board.

2. Build the board and its Apply buttons admin

   Manage board opens an ephemeral editor for what the board *looks like*: title, text, and up to five application types. Each type gets its own button label, emoji and colour, its own questions, its own list of granted roles, optionally its own review forum, an in-game-name setting, a stats-screenshot toggle and a 📜 Rules… panel. A type that grants no role is an inquiry — answered and archived, no role. Splitting "where things go" from "what it looks like" lets an admin design the board from a private channel while it lives in a public one.

3. A member presses Apply member

   They click the button for the type they want. If that type gates on rules, they get the rules link with ✅ I Agree / Cancel first — agreeing is recorded at the current version and the same form opens immediately. (A button click is its own interaction, which is what lets a gate sit in front of a modal; a modal itself is text-only and cannot hold a checkbox.) The form opens with Your in-game name, then the type’s questions.

4. A private thread and a staff post open bot

   The bot opens a private thread in the apply channel with the applicant in it, and files the review card as one post in the staff-only applications forum, tagged 🆕 New. Staff are added to the thread so it appears in their sidebar. If the type asks for an in-game stats screenshot, the prompt — with your example image and guide link — goes into the thread, and the next image they upload is captured. If the type uses in-thread rules, the rules and an I Agree button go there too.

5. Staff talk to them, and about them officer

   Two rooms, one job each. The thread is the conversation — staff and applicant both talk there, and the applicant’s messages are mirrored into the staff post so nobody has to open every thread. The forum post is the staff’s private discussion; its footer says so outright, because an officer once typed into the post expecting the applicant to read it. 🎙 Invite to voice opens a temporary interview room, pings the thread and DMs the applicant, then tells the recruiter which of the two actually landed.

6. Approve, and four things happen at once officer

   Approve grants the type’s roles, links the in-game name to their Discord account using the registry’s canonical spelling, renames them to [Recruit] TheirIGN if a role→prefix mapping applies, and posts the type’s self-service role menu into their thread if it carries one. Any role that could not be granted is named with its reason, and the approval still stands. Deny takes a reason, which the applicant sees in their thread.

7. The post archives itself as the record bot

   The forum post is retitled and retagged ✅ Accepted or ⛔ Declined, the thread conversation is copied into it as a transcript, and the post is archived — out of the active list, still browsable and searchable. Staff leave the applicant’s thread; the applicant keeps it. The transcript runs *after* the officer has been answered, because none of it is worth making someone watch a spinner for — and an archived decision with no record of the conversation that produced it is half a record.

If a stored board has drifted out of step by the time it renders — a type written by an older build, a half-applied migration — the extra row is dropped, not refused. Dropping it keeps Apply working. Refusing would leave the guild a dead pinned button with no explanation, which is exactly what happened the first time the gate demanded at least one question and a guild reconfigured mid-flight.

Archiving is what "archive folder" has to mean on Discord. Threads cannot be moved into a category, and a channel per applicant would burn the 500-channel limit permanently. An archived forum post drops out of the active list and stays browsable and searchable forever — with the conversation transcript copied into it, so the decision and the discussion that produced it live in the same place.

Claiming an unowned log name is also the intended flow — it is how a real player attaches their own history — so it cannot simply be blocked. Free and zero-balance names link instantly; only value moving stops for a human. The member is admitted either way and their nickname is still set, because a display name must not be held hostage to a ledger transfer. Approving a claim is officer-gated, not recruiter-gated: a recruiter may admit a member, but only an officer hands them a balance. Two officers clicking at the same moment cannot transfer twice, and rival claims on the same name are auto-denied.

/recruiter replies with the ephemeral console directly. An admin can also post a static pinned launcher board whose one button opens that same ephemeral console — the board is deliberately data-free, so it never goes stale and never leaks member data into a public channel. /ign unlink is member self-service (it detaches one of your own names); /ign clear is the officer one.