v2.5.5 Release Notes

BotShade has been updated to v2.5.5. This release centres on two new earthquake notifications.

One is an early warning that reaches your server before the shaking does. The other is an earthquake report that tells you how strongly each area actually shook — as a map image, not just numbers.

Alongside those, we’ve refreshed the AI models available for AI auto-response and moved thinking effort to five levels. Backups can now be restored even when the server they were made on is gone.

We also fixed a bug where auto-response rules stopped firing without any error or log entry. We’re sorry for the trouble this caused.

Table of contents:

• Highlights
• Earthquake early warnings
• Intensity reports after the shaking
• Before you rely on this
• The AI model line-up has been refreshed
• Backups survive losing the server
• Dashboard improvements
• Bug fixes
• Performance
• Compatibility
• Support and community

Highlights

• Earthquake early warnings. BotShade can now post to a channel of your choice before the shaking reaches you. You set the intensity threshold, which prefectures you care about, and who gets mentioned.
• Intensity reports after the fact, including a map showing how strongly each area shook.
• One earthquake does not mean twenty messages. Follow-up bulletins edit the original notification rather than posting again.
• The AI model line-up has been refreshed to ten models, including Claude Opus 5, the GPT-5.6 family, and Kimi K3.
• Thinking effort now has five levels: Low, Medium, High, Very High, and Max.
• Backups can be restored even if the original server is gone. Previously we refused every restore outside the server the backup came from.
• Fixed auto-response rules limited to certain channels or roles silently going quiet.
• The dashboard’s embed preview now fills in your variables with example values.
• Bots start up faster.

Earthquake early warnings

When an earthquake happens in Japan, an early warning is issued before the shaking spreads. BotShade can now receive those warnings and post them to a channel you choose.

Run /eew settings to set it up (requires Manage Server).

What you can configure

• Channel — where notifications are posted
• Minimum intensity — only notify when the forecast reaches this level or above
• Include forecasts — receive only warnings (intensity 5-lower or above is expected), or smaller forecasts as well
• Cancellation bulletins — whether to announce when a warning is withdrawn
• Prefectures — only notify when a specific prefecture appears in the forecast. Leave empty to cover the whole country
• Mention target — a role to ping alongside the notification
• Minimum intensity for mentions — set separately from the notification itself, so you can say “notify from intensity 3, but only ping from 5-lower”

Notifications don’t pile up

A single earthquake can produce twenty or more follow-up bulletins. Posting each one would bury the channel.

BotShade edits the first message instead. As the estimated intensity and magnitude are refined, the same message updates in place.

Three cases skip the throttle and update immediately:

• the estimated intensity goes up
• the final bulletin for that earthquake
• a cancellation

Cancellations go only to servers that were actually notified about that earthquake. Announcing the withdrawal of a warning nobody saw would only cause confusion.

Try it before you need it

/eew test sends a single notification in the real format.

• Samples — warning, forecast, cancellation, intensity bulletin, and detailed intensity report
• Real data — the most recent early warning and earthquake report as they were actually issued

Choosing a sample doesn’t send it right away — there’s a confirmation step, because a mis-click here posts to a live channel.

/eew status shows whether warnings are being received.

Intensity reports after the shaking

An early warning tells you what is about to happen. What actually happened — how strongly each area shook — is published afterwards. BotShade now reports that too.

• Intensity bulletin — issued about 90 seconds after the earthquake, with rough intensities by area
• Detailed intensity report — issued a few minutes later, with readings from individual observation points

The intensity map

A list of place names and numbers is hard to read at a glance. BotShade draws a map with the reported intensities shaded in and attaches it to the notification.

The map zooms to the area that shook, so both local and wide-area earthquakes stay legible. The unit being shaded — by area or by prefecture — is written on the image itself.

This map is drawn by BotShade from the intensities the Japan Meteorological Agency publishes. It is not the JMA’s own intensity distribution map.

Configuration

The intensity threshold, target prefectures, and mention settings are shared with early warnings. Only the on/off switch is separate, so you can say “warn me before it hits, but skip the report afterwards”.

You’ll find it under earthquake reports in /eew settings.

Before you rely on this

Earthquake notifications in BotShade are a supplement to disaster preparedness, not a replacement for it. Please keep the following in mind.

• Notifications may be delayed or may not arrive at all, depending on the source and on Discord. For nearby earthquakes, the notification can arrive after the shaking does.
• Early warnings are issued within seconds of detection. The estimated intensity can differ from what is actually measured, and warnings are sometimes withdrawn.
• For anything involving your safety, rely on official sources — television, radio, and the Japan Meteorological Agency. Please do not depend on these notifications alone.

Earthquake data comes from the Japan Meteorological Agency. The maps are drawn using open data published by the Japan Meteorological Agency and the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan, together with Natural Earth.

The AI model line-up has been refreshed

AI auto-response now offers a line-up of ten models.

Claude Haiku 4.5 is now available on every plan. Claude Opus 4.7 and 4.8 have been consolidated into Claude Opus 5, which supersedes both.

Thinking effort now has five levels

Thinking effort — previously Off / Auto / Low / Medium / High — is now Low / Medium / High / Very High / Max. The stronger settings are there for cases where you want the model to take its time.

• If you had selected Off or Auto, you are now on High. No action needed.
• The available levels differ by model. DeepSeek V4 has no Medium, and Claude Haiku 4.5 doesn’t support effort at all. The dashboard only shows the levels your chosen model actually accepts.
• If switching models leaves your selection unavailable, we move it down, never up. Changing model shouldn’t quietly increase your usage.

Models leaving the list

Six models are being removed from the dashboard’s options:

• Claude Sonnet 4.6
• Claude Opus 4.7 / Claude Opus 4.8
• GPT-5.4 / GPT-5.4 mini / GPT-5.5

If one of these is already selected, it keeps working. Once you switch to a different model, however, you won’t be able to select it again.

Backups survive losing the server

A backup exists so you can rebuild a server you’ve lost. Until now, though, BotShade refused every restore outside the server the backup was taken from.

That meant deleting a server left its backups permanently unusable — precisely when you needed them most.

In v2.5.5, anyone who owns the backup can restore it elsewhere:

• The person who created it — works even when the original server is gone
• The original server’s owner or administrators — for when the creator has since left
• Restoring within the same server is unchanged

Knowing an ID is not enough: a third party still can’t restore your backup, and backups created by other people never appear in your list.

The confirmation screen now shows the original server’s name and ID. Restoring is the operation where picking the wrong entry costs the most, so we show you what you’re about to use.

Overwriting an existing backup is still limited to the server it came from.

Dashboard improvements

The embed preview fills in your variables

In the embed editor, variables like {user} are replaced with real values when the message is sent.

The Discord-style preview used to show those variables exactly as typed, so you couldn’t see what the message would actually look like.

The preview now shows variables resolved to example values. A toggle above the preview switches back to the raw template.

Setting changes appear in the timeline

v2.5.4 added a log entry for the moment a saved change actually takes effect on the bot. That entry now appears in the timeline.

Settings, custom commands, and custom events each report how many items were reloaded. If a reload fails, the entry makes clear that the bot is still running on the previous configuration rather than being broken.

Bot icons

Bots without a custom icon used to be drawn with Discord’s default avatar. They now show the first letter of the bot’s name instead, in line with Discord’s brand guidelines.

The preview panels have also been recoloured to BotShade’s own palette.

Bug fixes

• Fixed auto-response rules limited to specific channels or roles silently going quiet. It triggered the moment you opened /responder settings or saved from the panel, and produced no error and no log entry — the rules simply stopped matching. Restarting the bot fixed it; opening the panel broke it again. Saving an affected rule once repairs it.
• Selecting Very High or Max for AI thinking effort could cause responses to fail. The dashboard had moved ahead of what the bot could accept; this is now resolved.

Performance

• Bots start up faster. Loading settings accounted for nearly all of the startup time, and each group of settings was fetched separately. They’re now fetched together.
• Removed unnecessary work during the ticket feature’s start-up. It ran on every bot, every time, and achieved nothing but load.

Compatibility

Your existing bots and command definitions continue to work in v2.5.5. No migration is required.

• Earthquake warnings and reports are off by default. Set them up from /eew settings if you want them. Servers that don’t will see no change.
• If AI thinking effort was set to Off or Auto, it is now High. Adjust it from the dashboard if you’d prefer something else.
• The six removed models keep working where they’re already selected. Switching away from one is permanent.
• Backup restores now work outside the original server, but only for the person who created the backup and the original server’s owner and administrators.

Support and community

For questions, bug reports, or feature requests, please reach us at any of the following:

• Support page — contact form
• status.botshade.com — service status

Thank you for using BotShade.