How to Set Up Rules Screening So Members Must Accept Rules Before Chatting
To make members accept your rules before chatting in Discord, enable Community in Server Settings, then turn on Rules Screening under Safety Setup. Discord automatically holds every new member behind a checkbox gate: they can read your rules but cannot send messages, react, or join voice until they tick "I agree" and submit.
This is a built-in Discord feature, not a bot trick, but it works far better when you pair it with verification, onboarding, and a moderation bot like PeakBot sitting behind the gate. Here is the full setup, step by step.
What Rules Screening actually does
Rules Screening (Discord also calls it "Membership Screening") shows new members a short, mandatory rules page the moment they join. Until they read it and click the agree button, Discord treats them as pending: they appear under a separate "Pending" list in your member sidebar, they cannot type in any channel, they cannot react, and they cannot speak in voice.
It solves two real problems. First, drive-by spammers and self-bots that join and immediately blast links never get the chance, because they never accept. Second, you get a clean, documented "yes, I read the rules" moment you can point to before you ban someone, which removes the "I didn't know" excuse.
The catch: the gate only exists if your server is a Community server. Plain servers do not have it. So the first move is enabling Community.
Step 1: Enable Community to unlock Safety Setup
Open Server Settings → Enable Community and run through Discord's short wizard. You will be asked to confirm two safety baselines (verification level and explicit content scanning), set a Rules channel and a Community Updates channel, and agree to Discord's community guidelines.
Turning on Community changes a few things about your server, so it is worth knowing what shifts before you flip the switch: the new Rules and Updates channels, the announcement-channel option, and the Safety Setup tab appearing in settings. We break the full before-and-after down in our guide to what enabling Community on a Discord server changes.
Once Community is on, a new Safety Setup section appears in Server Settings. That is where Rules Screening lives.
Step 2: Write the rules members must agree to
Go to Server Settings → Safety Setup → Rules Screening (on some layouts it sits under the Onboarding/Member Verification area). You will see a rules editor where you add the rules new members must accept.
Keep this list short and enforceable. The screening page is not the place to dump a 40-line manifesto; it is the place to put the handful of rules you will actually ban people for breaking. A solid default set:
- Be respectful. No harassment, hate speech, or personal attacks.
- No spam, advertising, or unsolicited DMs to members.
- No NSFW content outside designated channels.
- Use channels for their stated purpose.
- Follow Discord's Terms of Service and Community Guidelines.
A few practical tips:
- Lead with the bannable stuff. The first three rules should be the ones you enforce hardest, because that is what people skim.
- Write them as commitments, not descriptions. "No spam or advertising" reads better on an agree screen than "Spam is not allowed here."
- Match them to your real moderation. If your AI moderation auto-removes invite links, say "no advertising" in the rules so the removal is consistent with what members agreed to.
When you save, Discord enables the gate. From that moment, every new member sees this page before anything else.
Step 3: Confirm the gate is blocking new members
You do not have to trust that it worked; you can verify it. After saving Rules Screening, new joiners show up in a Pending group in your member list (right sidebar). Hover one and you will see they have not accepted yet.
While a member is pending, Discord blocks them from:
- Sending messages in any channel
- Adding reactions
- Joining voice or stage channels
- Sending you or other members DMs through the server context
The moment they click "I agree" and submit, they drop out of Pending and gain their normal permissions. To test it yourself, join with an alt account (or ask a friend) and watch the flow: you should hit the rules screen first, be unable to type, then unlock everything after agreeing.
If new members are somehow chatting without accepting, double-check that Community is still enabled and that you did not grant the @everyone role explicit send permissions in a way that bypasses the pending state.
Step 4: Pair screening with the right verification level
Rules Screening stops members until they agree. Verification levels stop a different threat: brand-new or unverified accounts, and account-creation spam waves during a raid. They work best together.
Verification levels (set under Safety Setup, or in the Community wizard) range from None up to Highest, layering requirements like a verified email, a phone number, or an account that has existed for at least five or ten minutes before a member can talk. Picking the wrong tier either lets raiders through or frustrates legitimate new members, so it is worth choosing deliberately. Our breakdown of which Discord verification level to pick walks through each tier and when to use it.
The pattern that works for most communities: set verification to Medium or High so accounts have to be aged and email- or phone-verified, then layer Rules Screening on top so even verified accounts still have to read and accept the rules. One filters bad accounts, the other documents consent.
If raids are a recurring problem, you can go further and add a dedicated verification gate with a reaction-role or button step that a bot handles, which sits behind the rules screen as a second checkpoint. Our Discord verification gate setup guide covers building that second layer.
Step 5: Layer welcome and onboarding on top
Once a member accepts the rules, the next thing they hit should not be a wall of silence. This is where welcome flows and onboarding earn their keep.
Welcome messages fire the moment someone clears the gate. With PeakBot's free welcome system you can post an embed in a greeting channel, send a DM, and auto-assign a starter role, which turns a fresh accept into an actual first message. You can see the options on the welcome and auto-role features page.
Onboarding questions go a step further. Discord's native Onboarding (also under the Community settings) lets you ask new members to pick interests or roles right after they agree, which routes them to the channels they care about instead of dropping them into a firehose. Done well, it cuts the "I joined and left because I didn't know where to go" churn. We cover the full setup in our guide to adding Discord onboarding questions.
A clean order of operations for a new member:
- Join → Rules Screening (must accept)
- Verification level already filtered the account on the way in
- Onboarding prompts pick interests/roles
- Welcome message greets them and points to a starter channel
- They start chatting in the right place
Step 6: Add AI moderation behind the rules gate
Screening gets people to agree to rules. It does nothing to enforce them once people start talking; that is the job of moderation. The two are a pair: the gate sets expectations, the moderator keeps them.
PeakBot's context-aware AI moderation reads the intent of a message and adapts per channel, instead of matching a fixed keyword blocklist. That matters for a rules-gated server because the things you ask people to agree to ("be respectful," "no spam") are exactly the things keyword filters miss: sarcasm, coded harassment, and link-laundering slip past a blocklist, while innocent messages that happen to contain a banned word get flagged. You can see how it behaves on the AI moderation features page.
Because members already agreed to your rules at the gate, your moderation actions become cleaner: when the bot removes an advertising message or times out a harasser, you are enforcing a rule they explicitly accepted, not a surprise. Pair that with PeakBot's anti-raid and anti-nuke protection and the rules gate becomes one layer in a real defense, not the only thing standing between you and a raid.
PeakBot is a free, AI-powered Discord bot: AI moderation, welcome messages with auto-role, anti-raid, full logging, and 30+ other features are free with no time limit and no trial. It replaces MEE6, Carl-bot, Dyno, and TidyCord with one bot, and it currently powers 500+ Discord communities.
How PeakBot compares for rules-gated servers
The screening gate itself is Discord's, so any bot "works" with it. The difference is what enforces the rules after the gate.
- MEE6 has the most recognizable moderation and leveling setup, and its reaction-role flows are familiar to most owners. Premium runs $11.95/month.
- Carl-bot is excellent at reaction roles and automod rule-building, the go-to for owners who want granular keyword control. Premium is $7.99/month.
- Dyno is a dependable, low-cost workhorse for classic automod at $4.99/month.
- Arcane leans into leveling and is roughly $7/server/month.
Each is genuinely good at its specialty. Where PeakBot stands apart is being the all-in-one that enforces a rules gate intelligently: AI moderation that reads intent rather than matching keywords, plus welcome, anti-raid, and logging in the free tier. For owners who also want their whole server structure built fast, the Pro AI Server Builder generates a complete custom server (channels, roles, categories, permissions, and automations) from a plain-English description in under 60 seconds. It is the only Discord bot that generates fully custom structures from natural language rather than presets. See the full breakdown on the comparison page.
FAQ
How do I force members to accept rules before chatting in Discord?
Enable Community in Server Settings, then turn on Rules Screening under Safety Setup and add your rules. Discord automatically holds every new member behind an "I agree" checkbox; they cannot send messages, react, or join voice until they accept.
Do I need Discord Community enabled to use Rules Screening?
Yes. Rules Screening (Membership Screening) only exists on Community-enabled servers. On a plain server there is no built-in agree-to-rules gate, so enabling Community is the required first step.
Does Rules Screening stop raids and spam bots on its own?
It helps, because spam bots and self-bots that join to dump links never accept the rules, so they stay blocked. But for real raid protection you should pair it with a Medium or High verification level and a moderation bot with anti-raid, like PeakBot's free anti-raid system.
Is a bot required to make members accept rules?
No, the basic rules-acceptance gate is native to Discord Community servers. A bot is what enforces those rules afterward and adds extra layers like a verification button, welcome flow, and AI moderation that reads message intent.
Can members chat while they are still pending?
No. While a member sits in the Pending list, Discord blocks them from sending messages, adding reactions, and joining voice until they click "I agree." If pending members can somehow chat, check that Community is still enabled and that the @everyone role was not granted send permissions that bypass the gate.
What is the best free bot to enforce rules after the gate?
PeakBot is a strong choice: its context-aware AI moderation, welcome messages, anti-raid, and full logging are free with no time limit, so you can enforce the rules members just agreed to without paying for premium automod.
