The Concept

Gentle was born from a desire for simplicity. In an ecosystem filled with bloated, complex bots that try to do everything, Gentle aimed to do one thing and do it perfectly: provide essential moderation and utility tools without the noise.

This was a personal project by Kars, built to serve a growing need for lightweight, reliable community tools. The core philosophy was "set it and forget it"—a bot that works out of the box with minimal configuration.

The Build

We built both the bot and its accompanying website in tandem, ensuring a seamless brand experience across both platforms. The design language was intentionally minimal, using whitespace and clean typography to convey ease of use.

Tech Stack

• Discord.js: For the bot logic, ensuring robust interaction with the Discord API. We utilized the latest slash command features to make interaction intuitive.
• Next.js: For a fast, SEO-friendly website. We used Server Side Rendering (SSR) to ensure that dynamic content like server stats loaded instantly.
• SQLite: A lightweight database solution that offered the perfect balance of performance and simplicity for our needs.

The Team page designed for Gentle

Scaling SQLite

Many would argue against using SQLite for a project of this scale, but for Gentle's specific read/write patterns, it was the perfect choice. By optimizing our queries and using efficient indexing, we were able to serve over a million users without the overhead of a complex database cluster. We implemented a custom caching layer in memory to reduce disk I/O for frequently accessed data, such as guild configurations.

Impact

Despite—or perhaps because of—its focus on simplicity, Gentle found a massive audience. It grew to serve 1.3 million unique users across 702 unique servers.

The project proved that you don't need feature bloat to be successful. A well-executed, focused product will always find its market. Users appreciated the speed and reliability of the bot, often switching from larger, more cumbersome alternatives.

Note: While the website is currently offline, the bot continues to serve its community daily.