The server is the database
Why Jessie keeps homework badges as Discord roles instead of a table of its own.
Jessie runs the Discord server for a Node.js workshop series. A homework badge is a role on the member, not a row in a table the bot keeps. The bot's own README puts it plainly: the server itself is the database.
That removes a whole class of disagreement. There is no second record to drift away from what people can see on the server, and a badge can be given or taken back in the interface an instructor already uses.
The cost is that the bot can only know what Discord can tell it. Anything it would need to remember beyond a role has to be asked of the server again, or left out.
Two guards go with the choice. A test checks that instructor-only material never reaches the folder the AI tutor reads from, and the updater is gated and rolls back if the new version fails.