Build a 'Fan Creation Preservation' Bot for Archiving In-Game Worlds and Islands

Why you need a Fan Creation Preservation bot — before another island vanishes

Creators pour months or years into fan worlds. Community hubs host screenshots, videos, QR codes and design dumps — then one update, one policy sweep, or one account suspension can erase that work overnight. In late 2025 a widely seen Animal Crossing: New Horizons island that had existed since 2020 was removed, leaving visitors and preservationists scrambling to recover what they could. The island's creator even posted,

“Nintendo, I apologize from the bottom of my heart… Thank you for turning a blind eye these past five years.”

This article is a developer-first, technical walkthrough to build a Fan Creation Preservation bot. It organizes submissions, auto-saves assets, generates rich searchable metadata, and exposes a discoverable archive — all while keeping community safety, contributor attribution and legal risks front-and-center. The walkthrough includes architecture, code patterns, deployment tips, moderation, and future-proof design choices tuned for 2026 trends like multimodal embeddings and vector search.

One-sentence summary

Build a Discord bot that ingests user-submitted fan assets (images, videos, design codes), enriches them with AI metadata, stores them in immutable object storage with versioning, indexes them in a combined full-text + vector search, and exposes a web UI and slash commands for discovery and moderation.

2026 context: why now

• Platform volatility: As the Animal Crossing removal showed, platform and publisher policies can remove content without community-safe backups.
• AI-powered metadata: Multimodal models and vector DBs (pgvector, Milvus, OpenSearch with vectors) let you build search that understands visuals and themes, not just filenames.
• Privacy & legal clarity: DMCA and creator-rights workflows are more established — but you must implement consent capture and takedown support.
• Server-side enforcement: Discord's richer interactions and webhooks (post-2023 upgrades through 2025) let bots coordinate uploads, consent forms and moderation flows without repeated manual steps.

Core architecture (high level)

Design the system as discrete, testable components. At minimum:

1. Discord Bot — receives submissions, confirms consent, queues jobs.
2. Ingestion Worker — downloads assets, computes hashes, creates derivatives (thumbnails, short clips), extracts metadata (OCR, color palette).
3. Metadata Enricher — runs AI models to auto-tag, embed images/videos, transcribe audio, detect NSFW content.
4. Storage Layer — S3-compatible object store with versioning & immutability; offsite backup to cold storage.
5. Database & Search — Postgres for relational data + pgvector or a vector DB for image embeddings and semantic search; full-text search for titles/descriptions.
6. Web UI / API — public (or gated) archive, browse, search by tags/creator/game, admin moderation tools.

Tech stack recommendations

• Bot runtime: Node.js + discord.js v14+ (fast, mature for slash commands). Alternatively, Python + discord.py if you prefer Python.
• Background workers: Python (FastAPI) for AI processing or Node.js for consistency.
• Object storage: AWS S3 (versioning, replication) or Backblaze B2 / Wasabi for cost-effective archival.
• Relational DB: Postgres with pgvector extension (or use Milvus/Weaviate if you expect millions of assets).
• Search UI: Elasticsearch/OpenSearch for full-text + vector hybrid search.
• AI/embeddings: use hosted APIs (OpenAI/Anthropic/etc.) or open-source vectors (CLIP, Data2Vec) depending on budget and privacy.
• Orchestration: Docker + Kubernetes for scale; GitHub Actions for CI/CD.

Step 1 — Create the Discord bot and intake workflow

Start small: a slash command and a submission modal. The user flow should capture consent, minimal metadata and attachments.

Required fields

• Creator display name and optional original handle (X/Twitch/YouTube).
• Game and category (e.g., Animal Crossing — Island / Patterns / House).
• License or permission checkbox (explicit consent to archive and display).
• Attachments: screenshots, video, zipped asset dumps, or text codes (Dream Address, pattern codes).

Example: minimal discord.js snippet (Node.js)

// on slash command submit
client.on('interactionCreate', async (i) => {
  if (!i.isChatInputCommand()) return;
  if (i.commandName === 'submit-creation') {
    // open modal or collect attachments
    await i.showModal(modal);
  }
});

// handle modal submit
client.on('interactionCreate', async (i) => {
  if (!i.isModalSubmit()) return;
  if (i.customId === 'submit-creation-modal') {
    const title = i.fields.getTextInputValue('title');
    const consent = i.fields.getTextInputValue('consent');
    // save to DB and enqueue worker
    await fetch(process.env.ARCHIVE_API + '/ingest', {
      method: 'POST',
      headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${process.env.ARCHIVE_API_KEY}` },
      body: JSON.stringify({ title, consent, user: i.user.tag })
    });
    await i.reply({ content: 'Thanks — your submission is being saved.', ephemeral: true });
  }
});

Do not accept any uploads via DMs without consent forms. Use ephemeral replies for privacy during submission.

Step 2 — Ingestion & asset processing

After the bot receives metadata, the ingestion worker must:

1. Download attachments using Discord CDN URLs (rotate credentials correctly).
2. Compute cryptographic hashes (SHA-256) for integrity and deduplication.
3. Generate thumbnails and low-res video previews (FFmpeg).
4. Extract textual data: OCR for images (tesseract or cloud OCR), extract subtitles/transcripts for videos (whisper-like models).
5. Detect NSFW content & illegal material (safety model + human moderation queue).

Important: hashing & immutability

Store the original asset under a content-addressed path like /objects/{sha256}.{ext}. Enable S3 versioning and object lock (WORM) for at least the retention window your community agrees on. Keep a separate relational record that points to the object hash. For cost and reliability guidance, see a CTO's guide to storage costs.

Step 3 — Metadata enrichment

Raw filenames and captions aren't enough. Add multiple layers of metadata:

• User-supplied metadata: title, description, creator handle, explicit license.
• Automated tags: run multimodal models to predict themes (e.g., "beach resort", "adult-theme", "cyberpunk").
• Embeddings: compute image & text vectors for semantic search.
• Extracted identifiers: island/dream codes, QR patterns, map coordinates in screenshots.

Example flow: pass the screenshot through CLIP-style model to get an embedding, run OCR to grab any text, then combine with user description to create a single searchable document with values for title, creator, tags, and vector embedding.

Step 4 — Indexing and search

Hybrid search is the winning approach in 2026. Use both full-text and vector search:

• Store text fields (title, description, tags) in Postgres with full-text search and trigram indexes for fuzzy queries.
• Store embeddings in pgvector or a vector DB and perform nearest-neighbor searches for visual similarity.
• Blend scores: weigh exact matches higher, and add semantic proximity as a secondary score.

Query example (pseudo)

-- full-text match
SELECT id, title, ts_rank_cd(textsearch, query) AS rank
FROM creations
WHERE textsearch @@ plainto_tsquery('beach')
ORDER BY rank DESC
LIMIT 50;

-- vector similarity (pgvector)
SELECT id, 1 - (embedding <#> query_embedding) AS similarity
FROM creations
ORDER BY similarity DESC
LIMIT 20;

Expose a single /search endpoint that merges and re-ranks these results server-side. Also consider AEO-friendly templates and structured fields so search engines and AI consumers index your records predictably; see best practices for AI-friendly content.

Step 5 — Moderation & legal workflows

Preservation isn't just storage — it's responsible storage. Implement these safeguards:

• Explicit consent checkbox on every submission; store a signed timestamped record.
• Automated NSFW filters to catch extreme content; route positives to a human-mod queue (consult open-source detection tools for verification workflows).
• Attribution and license fields. Encourage CC0/CC-BY choices so assets can be reused.
• DMCA takedown process — a channel and API that allows rights-holders to request removal; keep logs for audits.
• Revocation & immutability balance — you must respect takedown requests even if objects are versioned; maintain legal disclaimers and a clear policy.

Step 6 — UI and discovery features

Design your archive UX for exploration:

• Browse by game, genre, tags and time.
• Similarity search: "show me islands that look like this" — use image upload to search via embeddings.
• Creator pages that list contributions and credit streams.
• Exhibitions: curated collections and export bundles for offline preservation events (see a workflow for turning daily social images into archival prints: From Daily Pixels to Gallery Walls).

Data model (simple schema)

creations (
  id uuid PRIMARY KEY,
  title text,
  description text,
  creator_handle text,
  game text,
  category text,
  object_hash text,
  s3_path text,
  thumbnail_path text,
  tags text[],
  embedding vector(1536),
  nsfw_score float,
  consent_signed_at timestamptz,
  created_at timestamptz
);

Deployment, backups & reliability

• Push containers with CI. Run processing workers in an autoscaled pool and use durable queues (RabbitMQ / Redis Streams / SQS).
• Enable S3 lifecycle policies: standard > infrequent > cold archive. Keep at least two geographically-separated copies.
• Schedule integrity checks: verify stored object hashes monthly and reingest if corruption is found.
• Rotation & secrets: store tokens in a secret manager (AWS Secrets Manager, Vault). Never log raw Discord tokens or user emails.

Observability & analytics

Track these KPIs for healthy archive operations:

• Submissions/day, ingestion success rate, processing latency.
• Search queries / conversion to view/download.
• Moderation queue size and average resolution time.
• Storage growth and cold archive ratio (cost planning).

Growth & community workflows

Your bot should be a community tool, not a black box. Offer features that encourage discovery and curation:

• Submission badges & reputation for archivists who curate & review.
• Monthly archiving drives and export events.
• Integrations with streaming — auto-embed preserved creations into event pages.

Case study: How a community preserved an Animal Crossing island (hypothetical)

After the 2025 removal incident, a mid-sized Animal Crossing Discord implemented a submission bot. Members uploaded screenshots and Dream Addresses, checked a consent box and provided creator handles. The bot auto-saved assets, generated searchable tags ("Japanese signboards", "vending machines", "satirical layout") and created exhibitions. When the original island was removed, the archive had dozens of high-res screenshots, a short walkthrough video, and community commentary — preserving both assets and context. The archive also stored contact info for the original author so visitors could follow up.

Ethics, IP & long-term preservation

Preserving fan works is a moral gray area. Respect creators' wishes. Build in:

• Easy opt-out for creators (and a process to verify the request).
• Attribution and provenance metadata so future viewers know who made the piece and when (see discussion on why physical provenance still matters).
• Legal counsel for large-scale archiving or collections intended for public distribution.

Future-proofing & 2026 predictions

Expect the following through 2026 and beyond:

• Richer platform APIs: Publishers may offer better export hooks for community preservation as public pressure grows.
• Better multimodal indexing: Vector DBs will integrate directly with object stores and let you scale similarity search for images and video fingerprints.
• Legal frameworks: Community archives will increasingly need formal takedown & provenance handling to avoid liability.
• Composer tooling: More ready-made preservation modules will be available (SaaS archival endpoints, open-source ingestion libraries) — but building custom workflows will remain valuable for niche games like Animal Crossing.

Starter checklist — what to build first

1. Register a Discord bot, enable interactions & file intents.
2. Deploy a minimal ingestion API that stores attachments to S3 and records a DB row.
3. Implement consent capture and a basic moderation tag (automated NSFW check).
4. Index a small set of entries and build a simple search endpoint using Postgres full-text.
5. Ship a basic web UI and invite trusted community members to test and curate.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

• Ignoring consent — always collect and store a signed consent record.
• Assuming titles are unique — use content hashes and dedupe on SHA-256.
• Underestimating storage growth — set lifecycle rules early to control costs.
• Not planning takedowns — build takedown APIs into the admin UI from day one.

Resources & next steps

Key pieces to prototype first: a Discord slash command + modal, an ingestion REST endpoint that writes to S3, and a worker that computes a CLIP embedding and stores it in pgvector. Start with a free-tier object store and a small vector index to keep costs low.

Final takeaways

Fan creations are cultural history. A well-built archiving bot gives communities a way to preserve, search and celebrate those works without adding friction for creators. Use content-addressed storage, hybrid full-text + vector search, explicit consent, and robust moderation to create a resilient, ethical archive. With the trends of 2026, integrating multimodal embeddings and vector search will make your archive discoverable in ways that simple tag lists never could.

Call to action

Ready to build? Join the discords.pro developer community for a starter repo, Docker compose templates, and a moderation policy checklist tuned for fan-creation archives. Share your build, get feedback from community maintainers, and help make preservation a standard for all fan communities.

Related Reading

• Automating Metadata Extraction with Gemini and Claude: A DAM Integration Guide
• Edge-First Patterns for 2026 Cloud Architectures
• Breaking: Platform Policy Shifts — January 2026
• Review: Top Open‑Source Tools for Deepfake Detection
• Trend Hijacking 101: Turn Viral Memes Into Long-Term Engagement Without Getting Cancelled
• Paleontology Meets PR: How Studios and Influencers Could Rescue Public Interest in Extinct Species
• Nutrient Timing for Shift Workers in 2026: Wearables, Privacy, and Practical Implementation
• Smart Clinic Workflows in 2026: From DocScan to Hybrid Approvals
• Energy-Smart Winter Comfort: Combining Hot-Water Bottles with Smart Thermostats