[HN Gopher] Colibri - chat platform built on the AT Protocol for...
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Colibri - chat platform built on the AT Protocol for communities
big and small
Author : todotask2
Score : 94 points
Date : 2026-03-26 17:29 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (colibri.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (colibri.social)
| louisescher wrote:
| Hi, person behind the project here, thanks for the cross-post!
| todotask2 wrote:
| You're welcome! Cool project!
| louisescher wrote:
| Ty!
| em-bee wrote:
| where can those of us who are not on bluesky get an invite code
| for an account?
| louisescher wrote:
| Feel free to E-Mail me via the PDS's account:
| pds@colibri.social
|
| I'll send you a code!
| sensen wrote:
| This looks neat, but should I be concerned about the permissions
| this is requesting for my account? Bluesky: Manage your profile,
| posts, likes and follows
| louisescher wrote:
| Hi! We're doing that to allow you to update your profile from
| within the app. Not doing anything else besides that. If you
| have concerns, take a look at the source code:
| https://github.com/colibri-social/colibri.social
| czbond wrote:
| Very interesting project.
|
| From a product uptake perspective, I could suggest that since
| a user is still building trust when they begin use - to only
| require as few permissions as needed. I'd punt that profile
| update requirement out personally for another method later.
|
| An example might be when a user has used your app for N
| sessions, or after N months.
| iamnothere wrote:
| They should prompt the user for permission when they use a
| feature that requires it, explain why, and allow them to
| cancel if desired. Have seen this pattern used many times
| elsewhere.
| louisescher wrote:
| Good idea, will implement that! Maybe a button or
| something to refresh your permissions when/if you want to
| edit your profile via Colibri makes sense.
| imiric wrote:
| Interesting project, but...
|
| > BUILT ON OPEN STANDARDS. PRIVATE WHEN NEEDED.
|
| > Running a private group chat? As soon as the AT protocol
| supports private data, we'll work on implementing it and giving
| you the option to create private communities.
|
| Not exactly "private when needed" then, is it? It's disingenuous
| to even mention this in the marketing copy.
| louisescher wrote:
| Valid point! I'll get that section removed for now and either
| reword it later, or re-add when the protocol supports it.
| avtar wrote:
| Please consider adding screenshots of the UI that provide an idea
| of what the experience will be like without having to log in
| using Bluesky or other credentials.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| I assume it looks the same as literally every other chat app
| Muhammad523 wrote:
| Yeah. Lots of discord-like free-software(as in freedom) chat
| apps are spawning. I think it's clear that whichever becomes
| the most popular will not be about who has better code but
| rather about who manages to get a stronger community around
| their project.
| louisescher wrote:
| Done! Thanks for the suggestion, that's a good idea.
| avtar wrote:
| Thanks for the quick fix :) Nice to see more Discord
| alternatives these days.
|
| A few other landing page issues if you feel like addressing
| them:
|
| - Attempting to navigate with the Tab key results in tab
| order following nav elements once, where focus indicators
| aren't visible, and then the same elements get iterated over
| again but this time focus indicators are visible.
|
| - Tab order doesn't include screenshots and jumps to the FAQ
|
| - Clicking a thumbnail shows the larger image but without any
| elements for closing the overlay
|
| - Pressing Esc doesn't close the overlay
|
| - No skip links on any of the pages
| louisescher wrote:
| I don't know how I can keep forgetting about keyboard
| users. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I'm
| working on it!
| isodev wrote:
| "Your data isn't trapped on our servers" - where is it then? Who
| can access it?
|
| "Open social" is so much bs compressed in a couple of buzzwords.
| tjuene wrote:
| > where is it then?
|
| it might be on https://bsky.social, https://npmx.dev/pds or
| sitting next to your router in your living room in the form of
| a raspberry pi (https://atproto.com/guides/self-hosting)
| isodev wrote:
| But that's not where you want your chats now is it? E2EE? And
| how does it keep it all private since apparently the Bluesky
| bros haven't figured that part out?
| louisescher wrote:
| https://colibri.social/faq#where-is-my-data-stored I've
| just added a new FAQ entry to explain this in a bit more
| detail.
|
| > But that's not where you want your chats now is it? E2EE?
| And how does it keep it all private since apparently the
| Bluesky bros haven't figured that part out?
|
| It honestly depends. Right now, Colibri is meant to
| function for communities that are public anyway. If you're
| a streamer, an open source dev community, Colibri can help
| you with talking to people who don't want to be locked in
| by big corporations. As the E2EE and private data, the
| Bluesky people have posted a new proposal for that only a
| few days ago, which I'm already thinking about how to
| implement: https://dholms.leaflet.pub/3mhj6bcqats2o
|
| But, yes, for now, chats are public. Private data will
| hopefully be a thing soon on the network.
| eximius wrote:
| This probably needs a bigger callout. A user who isn't
| familiar with ATProto doesn't even know to ask this
| question and the design space from its contemporaries
| (e.g., discord, slack, etc) suggests that chats are
| nominally private if folks aren't a member of the
| channel.
|
| It's a very cool product but you have to let people know
| their messages aren't private.
| louisescher wrote:
| Yep, good feedback. I'll look into it. Will add a new
| section on the landing page or something.
|
| Edit: Section has been added!
| iamnothere wrote:
| Thanks for building this, UX is nice and should encourage people
| to switch from Discord. Bsky only is a bit disappointing as it is
| still heavily centralized. I would love to see a system like this
| that can also set up channels over Nostr and the Fediverse.
| Fragmentation is starting to become an issue with decentralized
| and federated social.
| louisescher wrote:
| We've taken a look at co-supporting ActivityPub as well
| actually! And yeah, the fragmentation is an issue. But I
| honestly think we might see at lease some level of interop
| between these fragments in the coming years, even if it's just
| some parts of the protocols and specs going in the same
| direction.
| jonashus wrote:
| Where is data stored? Bluesky? My PDS? Your PDS, for free?
| louisescher wrote:
| Hi, I've just added an FAQ entry about this:
| https://colibri.social/faq#where-is-my-data-stored
|
| Also, feel free to DM me (@colibri.social) on Bluesky if you
| want to migrate to the Colibri PDS! We do host one ourselves.
| the_axiom wrote:
| Only my own messages are in my PDS? Or the entire chat?
|
| How is the chat displayed if messages are scattered among
| multiple PDSes?
|
| What about the community metadata, where is it stored?
| louisescher wrote:
| Your own messages are on your PDS. The chat, the category,
| community and all metadata are stored on the PDS of the
| person who created the community. The chat is then
| displayed via our app view, which keeps a live index of all
| messages and provides some endpoints to collect them!
| rvrb wrote:
| Users in a Discord server/local community on tools like Discord
| naturally expect that their actions within that community are
| private in so far as they trust everyone in the community
| (including the operator) to keep it so.
|
| By using ATProto, Colibri fundamentally makes all of your
| communication within any community completely public to everyone
| on the internet.
|
| That's fine for something like Twitter, where the product sets
| the expectation of such a thing. You can imagine how big of an
| issue this is when you try to do it in a trusted community model.
| Add on that Discord is used by kids who likely don't know this
| and you can see why this is dangerous.
|
| I consider this not only just a liability but bordering
| negligence. It is fundamentally broken, at an architectural level
| em-bee wrote:
| any discord server that offers public invites is effectively
| public.
| rvrb wrote:
| First, the user knows this when joining a public community.
|
| Second, the moderators can choose to remove someone who has
| joined the community in bad faith.
|
| Third, it is entirely different than broadcasting every
| single action taken by every single user in every single
| community on the entire protocol to anyone with one URL.
| em-bee wrote:
| _the moderators can choose to remove someone who has joined
| the community in bad faith_
|
| unless you prevent new members from reading the chat
| history until given permission then they can already read
| everything before they are kicked out, and they can come
| back with a different account.
|
| you also can not detect people acting in bad faith if all
| they do is read.
|
| basically, you can't expect privacy if you don't limit
| members to people you know and trust. that goes for any
| group chat, encrypted or not.
|
| i also doubt that discord chatlogs are encrypted on their
| servers.
| rvrb wrote:
| What is your point? I feel I made the one you are making
| before you even responded the first time.
|
| That Discord communications can be exfiltrated in this
| specific set of circumstances (again, something I already
| said) does little to change that Colibri is implemented
| in the least privacy preserving way possible, short of
| publishing directly to every news and intelligence agency
| on your behalf, and does little to make that very clear
| in the first place.
|
| Aside from the fact that there is an authz layer built in
| to Discord that limits what users can see in any server.
| eximius wrote:
| Private channels in public servers exist. I'm almost entirely
| on private servers.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I agree that is borderline negligence, and by far the biggest
| issue with AT and Bsky. Here is what I believe to be the most
| recent discussion on that topic:
|
| https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/discussions/3363
| theturtletalks wrote:
| Having something like circles from the Google+ days would be
| needed if ATProto is going to go anywhere. Is it possible in
| the protocol?
| louisescher wrote:
| Fair point! A different user has already pointed out that this
| isn't disclosed enough on the landing page, and I'll be adding
| a section to clarify that, both on there and in the app itself.
|
| I think one of the replies here already linked the current
| proposal for private data spaces, which I'm hoping will become
| implemented later this year. At that point, people will have
| the option of either having their community be 100% public, or
| confined to a more Discord-style data storage, where people can
| still join, but not everyone can "just read" the messages
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Just want to chime in with, this does feel very slick, but
| this was the #1 question I had. I could not determine it from
| your site, and had to try it out to see.
|
| One major criticism of things like Discord is that they're
| private, so I don't think that it's inherently disqualifying,
| some people might even prefer it for that reason. But it's
| very, very important that you're very clear about this, up
| front.
| louisescher wrote:
| I really appreciate you chiming in, no matter how slick!
| New section has been added, lmk if you'd like to see this
| adjusted further
| jFriedensreich wrote:
| It's impossible to consider ATproto apps usable until the
| horrific oauth situation is fixed. It's still not possible to
| adjust oauth permissions to something restrictive dynamically so
| every app needs a new account which kind of defeats many of the
| interop promises, if apps even allow it (colibri requires invite
| code)
| schlu wrote:
| I totally understand that words and ideas get reused. But when I
| see Colibri, I think rest stop on the freeway (autoestrada) here
| in Portugal!
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Is there something like this on top of nostr too? I'd much rather
| see nostr because it's truly open.
| cmxch wrote:
| So does it have the same hermetically sealed qualities that other
| atproto implementations have (BlueSky)?
| louisescher wrote:
| Sorry, not quite sure what you mean when you say "hermetically
| sealed qualities", could you elaborate?
| ebbi wrote:
| Is there anything like this but more of a reddit style layout?
|
| I'm on a Facebook group and we're actively trying to get off of
| all Meta platforms, and wanted to see whether I could start up my
| own platform using an open source platform - but I think
| something like Reddit would be more suitable as opposed to a
| massive chat UI.
| louisescher wrote:
| Hi! We've got Forum-Style channels planned, similar to
| Discords, would that work for you? It'd still be a single text
| channel, and you could have multiple of them per community.
| ebbi wrote:
| Thanks for the reply! I'm not too familiar with Discords
| forums so will do a bit of digging
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(page generated 2026-03-26 23:00 UTC)