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Delete Me Discord

Log Output

The CLI does not always show the same kind of output.

What you see depends mainly on:

Log level comes first

The selected --log-level determines how much output is shown at all.

  • INFO is the normal user-facing mode and is what the examples in these docs assume.
  • DEBUG adds lower-level diagnostic output.
  • higher levels such as WARNING or ERROR suppress routine informational lines.

What is always shown

In normal terminal output at INFO level, the CLI shows the basic run flow:

  • authentication
  • the active deletion cutoff
  • which channel is currently being processed
  • a final summary
  • Total time

That gives you a high-level view even in the default lazy mode.

Dry-run output

In --dry-run, the CLI reports what it would do instead of deleting anything.

Each channel gets a summary line with:

  • messages that would be deleted
  • messages that would be preserved
  • reactions that would be deleted or preserved, when --delete-reactions is enabled
  • scan time
  • est. execute time
  • est. total time

At the end of the run, the CLI also prints a final summary with the same categories.

Dry-run is the best mode for checking whether your flags do what you expect before running an actual deletion.

Buffered mode output

With --buffer-channel-messages, the CLI fetches one channel up front before evaluating it.

In deletion mode, that adds a pre-execution timing line per channel with:

  • buffered messages
  • scan time
  • est. execute time

This is useful when you want to understand the next channel before the delete phase starts.

In --dry-run, buffered mode usually does not add much practical value. Dry-run already reports the important planning and timing information without it.

Deletion mode output

In a real deletion run, each channel ends with a result summary line.

That line includes:

  • deleted messages
  • preserved messages
  • deleted reactions and preserved reactions, when reaction deletion is enabled
  • total time

If buffered mode is enabled, the per-channel summary also includes execute time.

Meaning of the timing fields

  • scan time: how long it took to fetch and evaluate the channel or run
  • est. execute time: rough estimate for how long delete/reaction actions would take
  • est. total time: scan time + est. execute time
  • execute time: measured action time during a real buffered deletion run
  • Total time: actual wall-clock time for the whole command

The estimates are rough. They are based on planned delete/reaction actions plus the configured delete sleep timing, not on exact future API latency.

JSON mode

Use --json when you want machine-readable output instead of terminal-oriented log lines.

This is the right mode for wrappers and integrations.

In --json mode:

  • terminal-oriented formatting is disabled
  • each log entry is emitted as a JSON object
  • the human-readable summaries are replaced by structured log messages

If you are running the tool manually in a terminal, the default non-JSON output is easier to read.