dsc user¶

User-level operations. The symmetric group-side commands live under dsc group.

dsc user list¶

dsc user list <discourse> [--listing active|new|staff|suspended|silenced|staged] [--page N] [--format text|json|yaml]

Lists users via Discourse's admin users endpoint. Default listing is active. Each page is up to 100 rows; use --page to iterate. Text mode shows username, id, trust level, and a role flag (admin/mod/suspended/silenced/-).

dsc user list myforum                         # first page of active users
dsc user list myforum --listing suspended --format json

dsc user info¶

dsc user info <discourse> <username> [--format text|json|yaml]

Shows id, username, name, email (if returned by the server), trust level, role, suspension / silence state, last-seen, created-at, post count, and group count.

dsc user suspend¶

dsc user suspend <discourse> <username> [--until <when>] [--reason <text>]

Suspends a user. --until defaults to forever; otherwise pass an ISO-8601 timestamp such as 2026-12-31T00:00:00Z. --reason is stored in the audit log and shown to the user. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user unsuspend¶

dsc user unsuspend <discourse> <username>

Lifts an existing suspension. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user silence¶

dsc user silence <discourse> <username> [--until <ts>] [--reason <text>]

Silences a user (prevents posting; less prominent than suspend — the user can still log in and read). --until is an ISO-8601 timestamp; omit for indefinite. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user unsilence¶

dsc user unsilence <discourse> <username>

Lifts an existing silence. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user create¶

dsc user create <discourse> <email> <username> [--name <text>] [--password-stdin] [--approve]

Creates a user with active=true so they don't need to click a confirmation email before logging in. Pass --approve if the site has manual approval enabled (must_approve_users = true).

Password handling: - Omit --password-stdin to create with no password set. The user will receive a password-reset email when you run dsc user password-reset. - Pass --password-stdin to read a password securely from stdin. Useful for automation where you pipe from a password manager or Bitwarden:

pwgen -s 24 1 | dsc user create myforum alice@example.com alice --password-stdin
bw get password some-item | dsc user create myforum alice@example.com alice --password-stdin

Honours --dry-run.

dsc user password-reset¶

dsc user password-reset <discourse> <username>

Aliases: pwreset, pw-reset. Triggers Discourse's password-reset email for a user (the same flow as clicking "I forgot my password" on the login page). Discourse returns a generic success message whether or not the user exists — the response text from dsc reflects that, which prevents accidental enumeration.

Honours --dry-run.

dsc user email-set¶

dsc user email-set <discourse> <username> <new-email>

Alias: email. Sets the user's primary email address. With admin scope this bypasses the confirm-by-email step; without admin scope it falls through to Discourse's normal confirmation flow.

Honours --dry-run.

dsc user promote¶

dsc user promote <discourse> <username> --role admin|moderator

Grants the role to the user. Use --role admin to make them an admin, --role moderator for a moderator. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user demote¶

dsc user demote <discourse> <username> --role admin|moderator

Revokes the role from the user. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user activity¶

dsc user activity <discourse> <username> [--since <when>] [--types <csv>] [--limit N] [--format text|json|yaml|markdown|csv]

Reads the user's public activity feed (/user_actions.json) and renders it in the chosen format. Default output is markdown, defaulting to topics + replies for the last time window you specify.

Use case: archive your activity to a personal journal Discourse¶

The command is built for this workflow: keep a personal "journal" Discourse of your own, and use a nightly/weekly cron to roll up everything you posted on another forum into a single topic. Because the output is a markdown list of - [Title](URL) — date, it drops straight into a reply on the journal forum without any massaging.

Weekly roll-up via cron — one topic per week, subject containing the ISO week:

dsc user activity someforum marcus --since 7d \
  | dsc topic new myjournalforum 42 --title "Activity for $(date -u +%Y-W%V)"

Appending to a single rolling archive topic — one topic forever, daily reply:

dsc user activity someforum marcus --since 24h \
  | dsc topic reply myjournalforum 1234

Put either in crontab -e or a systemd timer and the archive maintains itself.

Flags¶

--since accepts a relative duration (7d, 24h, 30m, 1w, 90s) or an ISO-8601 date/timestamp. Omit to paginate everything available.
--types is a comma-separated list. Default topics,replies. Recognised names: topics, replies, mentions, quotes, likes, edits, responses.
--limit caps the number of items, independently of --since.
--format markdown (default) prints - [Title](URL) — date lines; text is a wider one-row-per-item human view; json, yaml, csv are structured.

Scope¶

Activity endpoint only returns entries the caller is allowed to see, so PMs and private-category posts are filtered out automatically — exactly what you want for a public archive.

Works without an API key¶

Because /user_actions.json returns public data to anyone who can read the forum in a browser, dsc user activity does not require apikey / api_username in your config. A minimal entry like:

[[discourse]]
name = "meta"
baseurl = "https://meta.discourse.org"

is enough to archive your public activity from a forum where you're a regular user (not an admin). If the forum is login-walled or the user profile is private, the server will return 401/403 and dsc will surface the usual credentials hint.

dsc user groups list¶

dsc user groups list <discourse> <username> [--format text|json|yaml]

Lists the groups the given user belongs to, sorted by group name. Default text output is two columns (name, id).

dsc user groups list myforum alice
# moderators  id:42
# staff       id:3

dsc user groups list myforum alice --format json

dsc user groups add¶

dsc user groups add <discourse> <username> <group-id> [--notify]

Adds the user to the group. With --notify, Discourse sends a notification to the user. Honours --dry-run.

dsc user groups remove¶

dsc user groups remove <discourse> <username> <group-id>

Removes the user from the group. Honours --dry-run.

Notes¶

Requires an admin API key (group membership changes are admin-scoped).
The bulk / list-driven variant of adding is dsc group add, which accepts a file of email addresses.