Harmony is an open-source, federated chat platform designed to offer familiar community tools without relying on a single company’s servers. It includes text and voice channels, threaded discussions, replies, reactions, polls, markdown, roles and permissions, moderation tools, direct messages, and cross-device mentions and unread counts. Voice rooms support drop-in conversations, spatial audio, video, screen sharing, soundboards, and - when enabled by a server - encrypted voice. The project presents its interface and features as an alternative to Discord, while emphasizing that communities can choose where their conversations are hosted.
Harmony uses ActivityPub, the protocol also used by Mastodon, Misskey, and Pixelfed, so users and posts can connect across services and Harmony instances can share members. Accounts can be moved between instances with followers retained. A two-way Discord bridge is intended to let communities adopt Harmony gradually, carrying channels, threads, replies, and reactions across both platforms. Administrators can self-host with a guided one-command installer, and developers can build bots through a REST API, gateway, and webhooks. The project promises no ads, tracking, or investors; it offers data export, account portability, and AGPL-3.0 licensing so others can run or fork the software. End-to-end encryption is available when a server requires it, and the project is maintained publicly by contributors.
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