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Posted by speckx 2 hours ago

Chatto is now Open Source(www.hmans.dev)
234 points | 47 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 1 minute 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 16 minutes ago||
Can it be installed on Cloudflare or Vercel or something else that is easy/cheap/free?
uproarchat 15 minutes ago||
I run something similar with livekit, all on hetzner. its exceedingly affordable for a bunch of people at once to use it.
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 9 minutes ago|
Looks like it's planned.

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

mertbio 1 hour 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 46 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.

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

Cyberdog 18 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.
yard2010 5 minutes ago||
I agree with this sentiment so much but before I could figure I turned into it. I'm feeling torn - it's helping me write and ship good code as I couldn't before, but it feels like I don't understand the real price of using it non-stop.
dormento 33 minutes 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! :)

uwemaurer 7 minutes ago||
Looks great! How does it compare to Zulip? we self host zulip and are quite happy with it
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 35 minutes 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 21 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 46 minutes 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.

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
hackernows_test 5 minutes ago||
I’m
theturtletalks 1 hour 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 1 hour 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 1 hour 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.

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