Gavel

Punishment GUI for LiteBans with automatic escalation.

Staff run /ban player. Gavel ignores the reason and duration they typed, opens a menu of the offences you configured, and picks the punishment from how many times that player already offended in that category. LiteBans still applies it, so broadcasts, history, cross-server sync and appeals keep working.

Hacked Client  #1  ->  15d ban
Hacked Client  #2  ->  25d ban
Hacked Client  #3  ->  permanent ban

Requirements

Spigot, Paper or any fork on 1.16 or newer, Java 8 or newer, and LiteBans.

Install

Drop the jar in plugins/, restart, edit plugins/Gavel/categories.yml, run /gavel reload.

Configuration

File	What is in it
categories.yml	The offences, their escalation tiers, and the menu layout
config.yml	Which commands are intercepted, how they run, storage, sounds
messages.yml	Every string shown to a player

All three are commented. The part that matters is a category:

categories:
  hacked_client:
    slot: 10
    permission: 'gavel.category.hacked_client'
    expire-after: 90d
    icon:
      material: NETHERITE_SWORD
      name: '&#ff5555&lHACKED CLIENT'
      lore:
        - '&7Previous offences: &f%offenses%'
        - '%tiers%'
    tiers:
      - { type: BAN, duration: 15d, reason: 'Hacked Client #1' }
      - { type: BAN, duration: 25d, reason: 'Hacked Client #2' }
      - { type: BAN, duration: perm, reason: 'Hacked Client #3' }

Types are BAN, IPBAN, MUTE, WARN and KICK, and can be mixed inside one category. Durations use s m h d w mo y or perm.

Commands

Command	Permission
/gavel <player>	gavel.use
/gavel history <player>	gavel.history
/gavel clear <player> [category]	gavel.admin
/gavel reload	gavel.admin
/gavel version	gavel.admin

Permissions

Permission	Grants
gavel.use	The overlay opens on punishment commands, and /gavel can be run
gavel.bypass	The raw LiteBans commands, without the overlay
gavel.category.<id>	One category
gavel.silent	Silent punishments with shift-click
gavel.history	A player's history
gavel.admin	reload, clear and version

Good to know

• Gavel keeps its own gavel_offenses table. With database.mode: AUTO it reuses the LiteBans database on MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, and falls back to a local SQLite file on H2, which locks its file exclusively.
• /unban, /unmute and friends roll the counter back, so the next punishment does not escalate from one that no longer exists.
• execution.commands are templates, so a LiteBans build with different command names is a config change rather than a recompile.
• Player names must match exactly. A partial name is rejected instead of guessed.
• gavel.bypass defaults to false on purpose. A blanket * permission hands it out and the overlay stops opening.