StaffChat

A private chat channel for your server's staff team. One command, one permission node, zero noise. Toggle into staff mode to keep the next conversation off public chat — or quick-fire a single line with @hello without ever leaving the global channel. Built so secret conversations never leak through Discord-bridge mods that mirror public chat.

StaffChat 1.0.0 — for Minecraft 1.21.1 / Fabric. Server-side only. No hard dependencies beyond Fabric API. LuckPerms optional. Drop it in mods/, op yourself, and it works.

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What it does

Three ways to send to the staff channel, all gated by a single permission staffchat.true:

• /staffchat alone toggles "staff chat mode" — every regular chat line you type now goes to staff only until you toggle off. A title pulse + a persistent ● Staff Chat Mode actionbar reminds you you're in stealth mode so you never accidentally leak to global.
• /staffchat <message> (or /sc <message>) sends a one-off without changing your toggle state. Good for a quick reply mid-game.
• @<message> quick prefix in normal chat — type @need help at spawn and the message routes to staff only. The prefix character is configurable in case @ clashes with your mention syntax.

Staff who aren't in toggle mode still receive every staff message. Toggle is purely a sending convenience — it doesn't gate reception.

Mention pings

Inside any staff message, drop @<playername> to ping that staff member:

• Their actionbar flashes ★ Mentioned by <you>
• A configurable chime plays (default: experience-orb pickup)
• Self-mentions skipped, offline / non-staff names skipped

Sound id, volume, pitch, and actionbar template are all in the config.

Built for privacy

This is a staff channel — leaks would be embarrassing. The mod is architected so:

• Staff messages NEVER reach the global chat pipeline. We suppress at ServerMessageEvents.ALLOW_CHAT_MESSAGE (return false) before any chat broadcast happens. No /say-spam fallback, no whispered-to-self exposure.
• Other Discord chat-bridge mods do NOT pick up staff messages. Bridges like Styled Chat, ServerSideUtils, simple-discord-bridge etc. hook the chat-broadcast pipeline. Because we suppress at the ALLOW phase and re-deliver as system messages (not chat messages), those bridges never observe a staff line. Your secret conversations stay secret.
• The only intended Discord mirror is the built-in webhook. Off by default. Set discord.enabled = true and a webhook URL when you actually want staff mirrored to a specific Discord channel — at which point YOU control which channel sees it.
• The webhook posts with allowed_mentions.parse = [] so a staff member typing @everyone doesn't actually ping the Discord server.

Built-in Discord webhook (opt-in)

Optional. Off by default. Set:

discord {
    enabled = true
    webhook-url = "https://discord.com/api/webhooks/.../..."
    username-format = "{sender}"
    avatar-url-format = "https://mc-heads.net/avatar/{uuid}"
    retries = 1
}

Async POST via Java 21's HttpClient on a dedicated single-thread pool — never blocks the server tick. Failures retried up to retries times; misconfigured webhooks (4xx) auto-suppress for 5 minutes so a stale token doesn't spam your console.

LuckPerms metadata prefixes (soft-dep)

If LuckPerms is present, each sender's [Prefix] from LuckPerms metadata is automatically prepended to their name in staff chat. Without LuckPerms, fall back to a config-based map keyed by staffchat.rank.<id> permission:

prefixes {
    owner = "&c[Owner] "
    admin = "&4[Admin] "
    mod   = "&9[Mod] "
}

A player's prefix is the first matching staffchat.rank.<id> they hold, in declaration order. Final fallback: blank.

Defensive design

Same paranoid security patterns as our other server mods:

• Permission re-checked on every message send — a staff member demoted between two messages silently drops off the recipient list with no leaking error.
• Input sanitizer strips control chars and the raw section-sign so nobody injects malformed Minecraft formatting; caps message length at chat.max-length (default 256); rejects "all formatting, no content" payloads.
• Rate limit — sliding 30-second window, default 10 messages per window, configurable. Sender gets a "slow down" reply, message dropped server-side, audit log records the rate-limit event.
• staffchat.bypass.rate-limit uses explicit-only permission resolution — OPs don't auto-bypass unless LuckPerms specifically grants it.
• Audit log — every staff send appends to logs/staffchat-audit.log with an 8-char base36 transaction id, timestamp, sender UUID + name, sanitized content, recipient count, and outcome (DELIVERED / RATE_LIMITED / SANITIZED / DROPPED). Atomic appends, useful for incident review.

Permissions

Node	Default	Purpose
staffchat.true	OP 4 fallback	Send + receive in the staff channel
staffchat.bypass.rate-limit	false (explicit only)	Ignore the rate limit
staffchat.admin.reload	OP 3	/staffchat reload
staffchat.admin.list	OP 3	/staffchat list
staffchat.rank.<id>	—	Fallback prefix tier when LuckPerms is absent

Without a permissions plugin: /op <name> is enough — OP 4 satisfies the staffchat.true fallback.

With LuckPerms: lp group default permission set staffchat.true false then grant per-rank.

Commands

/staffchat              Toggle staff chat mode              (staffchat.true)
/staffchat <message>    One-off send (no toggle change)     (staffchat.true)
/staffchat reload       Reload config from disk             (staffchat.admin.reload)
/staffchat list         List currently-online staff         (staffchat.admin.list)
/sc                     Alias for /staffchat toggle
/sc <message>           Alias for /staffchat <message>

Configuration

config/staffchat/config.conf is HOCON. Notable knobs:

staffchat {
    chat {
        format            = "&8[&cSTAFF&8] &f{prefix}&7{sender}&8: &f{message}"
        quick-prefix      = "@"        # set to "" to disable
        max-length        = 256
        toggle-indicator  = "&c● Staff Chat Mode"
        toggle-on-title   = "&c&lStaff Chat ON"
        toggle-off-title  = "&7&lStaff Chat OFF"
    }
    mentions {
        enabled         = true
        sound-id        = "minecraft:entity.experience_orb.pickup"
        sound-volume    = 0.7
        sound-pitch     = 1.2
        actionbar-text  = "&e★ Mentioned by {sender}"
    }
    discord {
        enabled            = false
        webhook-url        = ""
        username-format    = "{sender}"
        avatar-url-format  = "https://mc-heads.net/avatar/{uuid}"
        retries            = 1
    }
    prefixes { ... }
    security {
        rate-limit-per-30s = 10
        log-to-file        = true
        log-file           = "logs/staffchat-audit.log"
        log-to-console     = false
    }
    persist-toggled-state = true
    message-locale        = "auto"
    messages {}
}

Edit by hand and /staffchat reload, or hot-reload to pick up edits live without bouncing the server.

i18n

English bundled. Drop config/staffchat/lang/<locale>.json to add any other language without rebuilding the jar. Loader prefers config-dir overrides over bundled resources, with en_us as the canonical fallback.

Requirements

Hard dependencies:

• Minecraft 1.21.1
• Fabric Loader ≥ 0.16.0
• Fabric API
• Java 21

Bundled inside the jar — no extra installs:

• Fabric Permissions API
• SpongePowered Configurate HOCON
• Typesafe Config

Optional soft dependency:

• LuckPerms — for [Prefix] metadata in staff messages.

What it intentionally is not

• Not a chat-bridge mod — the optional Discord webhook only mirrors the staff channel. It does not bridge global chat to Discord. Use a real chat-bridge mod for that.
• Not a moderation tool — no /mute, /kick, /ban. Use vanilla or a moderation mod.
• Not multi-channel — one staff channel. If you want admin / mod / builder split channels, that's planned for v1.1.
• Not client-side — runs server-side only, players need nothing installed.

Target audience

Server operators who want a quick, reliable, Discord-isolated way for their staff to talk in-game without spinning up Slack, a side voice channel, or a moderation suite they don't need. Drop the jar in mods/, op yourself, type /staffchat — done.

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License: MIT
Author: souljagger