Chatto is now Open Source

277 points by speckx 2 hours ago | 56 comments

wxw 1 hour ago |

> It’s designed to be extremely easy to self-host on your own infrastructure.

Kudos for this. Per the docs: https://docs.chatto.run/,

> Chatto ships in a compact, self-contained binary

> it uses NATS, a compact message broker that also ships with a built-in stream persistence engine [...] NATS is just as easy to provision as Chatto, and most of our examples will show you how.

> you can also configure an external S3-compatible object storage for Chatto to store your files in, and we strongly recommend doing so...

> The actual calls are powered by LiveKit (Apache-2.0), which you need to deploy alongside Chatto. As with NATS, the deployment examples show the required wiring.

> ...

And kudos for backing it up with real guidance. Great project.

OhSoHumble 38 minutes ago | |

This is super cool. More options is always good. Something that is confusing about the docs though... is there a desktop application? The screenshot implies there is but I couldn't find the docs to download THAT.

electriclove 53 minutes ago | |

Can it be installed on Cloudflare or Vercel or something else that is easy/cheap/free?

uproarchat 52 minutes ago | | |

I run something similar with livekit, all on hetzner. its exceedingly affordable for a bunch of people at once to use it.

mikkelam 8 minutes ago |

Super happy to see someone take on slack. We just want a performant chat with simple features.

Slack integrations are overrated. Just give me webhooks.

mertbio 2 hours ago |

I’ve known Hendrik for years, and he is one of the most talented developers I’ve ever met. I’m confident this project will become successful very quickly. Beyond the project itself, what fascinates me most is how he single-handedly developed it by leveraging agentic coding.

budsniffer952 1 hour ago | |

But I read here every day that agents can't code. And that "real developers" spend more time fixing AI bugs than producing code, and it slows them down.

You mean to tell me smart people can leverage these tools to do things at a scale they couldn't before? Blasphemy!

rootatixww3 32 minutes ago | | |

don't forget "where are all these beautiful apps that supposedly everybody vibe codes now?"

Cyberdog 56 minutes ago | | |

Are you sure you read that here? I came back yesterday after a hiatus and I’ve been dismayed how many posts are just “yeah, I just run Claude all day” without a hint of embarrassment or shame.

bakugo 24 minutes ago | | |

> But I read here every day that agents can't code. And that "real developers" spend more time fixing AI bugs than producing code, and it slows them down.

This is all correct, though. I haven't tried this, but I can guarantee it's a buggy, incoherent mess, same as every other vibe coded app I've ever tried, no exceptions.

frenchie4111 1 hour ago |

This is awesome! Some feedback - I can't tell anywhere from the website if there is mobile support (which is a must-have if I want to consider moving my company or friends over to this)

mediaman 47 minutes ago | |

Looks like it's planned.

https://github.com/orgs/chattocorp/projects/1?pane=issue&ite...

dormento 1 hour ago |

Couldn't help but smile because "chato" in portuguese means "boring", and this seems very easy to set up and use.

Here's to more boring software! :)

rootatixww3 31 minutes ago | |

chudo missed opportunity

simonw 1 hour ago |

What's the rationale for the dual licensing? It looks like the Go backend is AGPL but the TypeScript frontend is Apache 2.0.

Why not keep it all AGPL?

goodroot 1 hour ago | |

Backend under AGPL prevents someone hosting it as a service. AGPL specifies that hosting _is_ distribution. Therefore, anyone hosting it must do so with public code. This provides a soft form of exclusivity to run their own Cloud.

A frontend, permitting customizability, white-labeling, and so on, makes more sense to be more permissive.

Grafana is a solid example to illustrate why.

Moved from Apache to AGPLv3 in 2021 specifically so cloud providers couldn't host modified versions without contributing back, while keeping plugins Apache-licensed.

ricardobeat 58 minutes ago | |

AGPL stops others from running a competing cloud service using the Go backend. It does nothing for the frontend except scare off enterprise users.

johntash 1 hour ago |

Very cool. I don't usually get excited for new chat apps, but I like the idea of having one frontend for multiple servers instead of pushing hard on p2p or federation.

I do also still like irc, but haven't used it much in recent years because most of the people I talk to are using discord now.

ezst 29 minutes ago | |

One front-end for multiple servers is how you end up reimplementing XMPP (bar federation) before you know it: servers are not guaranteed to run identical/compatible versions -> you bake versioning at capability level in the protocol -> you make clients and servers degrade predictably when that happens -> you write a standard to document it formally -> you invite around the table those authors of alternative client and server implementers and boom, you've got the X in XMPP, and the XEP standardisation process and the XSF to support it.

Catloafdev 17 minutes ago |

Looks great - is there any info on what server resources are actually required per feature or user count?

uwemaurer 44 minutes ago |

Looks great! How does it compare to Zulip? we self host zulip and are quite happy with it

theturtletalks 2 hours ago |

Looks really nice, thank you for open-sourcing. I keep a directory of opensource alternatives. Would you say this is a Discord or Slack alternative?

moeffju 2 hours ago | |

I've been testing/using chatto since early on and I'd say it's both and neither. It feels much nicer to use than Slack, but as of now it's missing some of the more "Enterprise" features. I would probably say it's a Slack-like Discord? But from the architecture it would be capable of playing as a full Slack replacement.

I also maintain a Chatto bot framework and a Tauri client, need to update those now :)

monroewalker 1 hour ago | | |

What makes it nicer to use than Slack?

DANmode 2 hours ago | |

> You’re probably familiar with the one that rhymes with “knack”, or the one that rhymes with “beams”, or the one that rhymes with “this gourd”.

> Chatto is just like those.

from TFA. Seems yes.

theK 24 minutes ago |

So encrypted at rest but no E2EE, did I read that right?

acomagu 1 hour ago |

Would English speakers pronounce this as "Chat-to"? To a Japanese person, this clearly sounds like "Cha-tto," which simply means "chat."

bigfishrunning 1 hour ago | |

as an english speaker, i would pronounce it "chat-oh", but i'm open to correction

johntash 1 hour ago | |

I don't know what the "official" pronunciation is, but I would say "Chat-o" is probably right.

Gualdrapo 1 hour ago | |

At least here in colloquial "rolo" spanish people use to call "chato" (which would sound the same as "chatto") someone with a pug, snub nose

skybrian 1 hour ago |

I’m wondering about privacy tradeoffs. Looks like they’re similar to Discord where the chats won’t show up in web searches and you can’t read anything without joining. But if anyone can join, it’s not like Signal either and end-to-end encryption wouldn’t make sense.

(They do have end-to-end encryption for video.)

pzmarzly 1 hour ago | |

I hope they introduce some sort of public read-only view that an admin can enable. Discord has https://www.answeroverflow.com/ and https://www.linen.dev/

Imustaskforhelp 1 hour ago |

Congrats for open sourcing it, looks interesting!

How does this compare to fluxer.gg though?

The part that I really liked about chatto is that it seems to be made very easily to self host which is something that I really appreciate actually.

roshannarma 32 minutes ago | |

I have been patiently waiting for fluxer, but honestly I just want to self host and have it available and fluxer has been sitting on that for a while

hampus 24 minutes ago | | |

I'm the developer behind Fluxer – self-hosting is ready to use already [1][2][3], people are using it actively currently, and I'm currently working to make account switching across instances in the desktop app a reality. This, with a big voice update around the corner, will let us move much faster moving forward!

[1]: https://fluxer.app/blog/mobile-clients-and-fluxer-v2

[2]: https://docs.fluxer.app/operator/get-started/

[3]: https://github.com/fluxerapp/fluxer

npodbielski 2 hours ago |

Ah mobile app is not ready yet. I am looking for some alternative to matrix because running it with bots is a bit convoluted, i.e. you have to have limit of edits of message for model streaming or you will kill entire room. Or I never seen robots in matrix sending encrypted messages. Why bother than? Anyway if mobile will be a thing this seems like perfect thing to have for your family and friends.

moeffju 1 hour ago | |

I created a Tauri based app but IMO it's not ready for prime time on mobile. On desktop, it's my daily driver for Chatto. If anybody wants to contribute, the foundation (desktop & mobile) is at https://github.com/teal-bauer/chatto-tauri

npodbielski 1 hour ago | | |

Interesting but could you put few screenshots there? Of both desktop and mobile? It is really hard to invest time into installing something that you cant see anywhere prior, and it will be really easy to do for someone that is using it daily. Sorry for complaining. Seems like nice project.

uxjw 41 minutes ago | |

Yeah its unfortunate there's an AI app on the apple store with the same name

hackernows_test 42 minutes ago |

I’m

tempfile 1 hour ago |

Does this federate with anything, like Matrix or XMPP? If it is locked into a single software, I fear nobody will ever switch to it (I have too many chat apps already!)

hrdwdmrbl 1 hour ago |

I've been running Mattermost for a couple of years now and I'm content with it. It does feel a little bit clunky sometimes, but it's been stable and performant so I can't really complain. It can also feel a bit much sometimes. A bit too complex. A bit too feature-rich. But if I just ignore most of it, then it's good. I will say that Chatto looks nicer, appears to be simpler to setup and also has simpler licensing. Can it auto-update itself? That's something that's bad with Mattermost.

sreekanth850 48 minutes ago |

looks super cool.

latexr 1 hour ago |

> And you can just self-host it. For free, too! (A weird thing to write, but the OSS chat app space has become very weird in many ways!)

Wait, what? There are open-source chat apps that you have to pay to host yourself? How does that work? Or did I misunderstand?

bityard 1 hour ago | |

Many otherwise open-source chat apps are "open-core," they tie certain features to a subscription. Can be things like chat history, voice calls, video calls, but a very popular one is SSO and AD/LDAP integration.

francislavoie 1 hour ago | |

Yeah a lot of them like Mattermost become surprisingly limited unless you pay. It's very annoying.

claytongulick 1 hour ago | | |

Mattermost's licensing is a little confusing, but from what I understand, you're only really super-restricted if you use the prebuilt binaries (which have a different license than the source code).

IIRC if you build it yourself it's pretty much all AGPL, with few limitations.

toomuchtodo 2 hours ago |

Very cool! You should request being added to https://european-alternatives.eu/

vsviridov 2 hours ago |

Amazing. And with SSO out of the box without weird "Oh, SSO is Enterprise only" BS.

icase 1 hour ago |

soooooo campfire then

dewey 1 hour ago | |

There's space for more than one self-hosted chat app in the world. Also very ignorant comment towards a project someone probably spend a lot of time on.

jkman 34 minutes ago | |

Off the bat, it seems that campfire doesn't support voice/video calls. So no, not at all

dofm 1 hour ago |

> Chatto aims to be the group chat application that you actually enjoy using.

So not like Discord or Slack?

> This is what it looks like:

Discord and Slack?

I mean, OK, it has EU hosting and that is good. But I see nothing obvious here that solves the noise and irritation of Discord and Slack.

john_strinlai 1 hour ago | |

most complains i see about the others are performance-related, not looks-related. and chatto is trying to be performant.

dofm 1 hour ago | | |

It is not looks or performance (I have no idea) I am talking about. It is the shape of the functionality — the intent of it.

All these systems end up with far too much furniture on screen, and this appears no exception.

I will test it, of course. But the promotional material argues against itself.