cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/48313374
Promotional
Im not affiliated to Fermi/Harmony chat in any way, im just a user who liked it and want to share my experience of the app i find worthy of sharing
so i wanted to share a promising project that I have been using for a few months.
made this post to promote and share this platform since it needs more people, theres arent many atm and it deserves way more.
Fermi/Harmony Chat is free and open source discord like guild/community centered chat platform with most of the features that are expected from those platforms like message channels, vocal chats, threads, screensharing and more. Importantly the chat platform has a strict stance against LLMs AIs and AI generated slop like vibe coding and other abusive usage of AI that replaces human work and slop it in the process. sadly fermi/harmony is unique of having a strong stance against AI. (other similar projects sadly uses AI and excuses AI usage and vibe coding)
the platform also allows users to create their own client for the platform. harmony chat is the API and fermi is just the currently only working client on the platform (was a spacebar client previously until harmony was created as a spacebar fork with the goal of fixing the many issues and bugs present on spacebar) and in the future, instances are going to be federated and the process will be managed directly by the client (fermi and other clients) without being tidious and for advanced users like on matrix, so more easy and beginner friendly.
the platform also is more lenient on its acceptable policy and have a no bullshit moderation. (sadly not the case for other alternatives which sucks very much)
IMPORTANT
currently the project in its early stage and still has lots of bugs, glitches and various issues.
it is currently only accessible through a web browser (there is no app neither on desktop or on mobile)
lots of features are not finished and the platform still need major improvements. but i hope it is going to grow and become a viable alternative.
currently there are around 800 people are registered on fermi/harmony chat.
fermi.chat the main website currently (use this one to register) melodychat.org the organisation’s website (its called melody on codeberg and on the website since harmony was taken)
codeberg link of both harmony and fermi :
https://codeberg.org/MelodyChat/Harmony https://codeberg.org/MelodyChat/Fermi
credit to Mathium5, eliza, devs and contributors for developping and maintaining fermi and harmony chat.
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Thanks for shouting us out! I’m a member of the Harmony team and very proud of the community we’ve brought together We’ve got a wonderful place here, and we’re gaining members every day _
is this related to fosscord/spacebar?
its not spacebar but its related, fermi was once a spacebar client. but due to spacebar management and weird lies from them around AI (they were dismissive about AI usage). harmony was made (spacebar fork) with the goals of actually fixing the bugs and glitches and instances problems spacebar still have to this day. in short, spacebar refused to improve so harmony was made
Do you know how does it compare to stoat.chat? I was looking to self host something recently, and landed on stoat.chat.
atm its kinda better than stoat since development doesnt take much time, unlike stoat, which are horribly slow to fix bugs and implement features, harmony have constant fixes and updates, also being open to any contributors unlike stoat which requires to apply to be able to contribute which is suspicious for a supposed open source software.
also (kinda unrelated) harmony have better moderation than stoat which had pretty messed up things happens in the mod team plus them still enforcing OSA since they are in the uk.
keep in mind federation isnt ready atm on harmony.
heres the codeberg : https://codeberg.org/MelodyChat/Harmony
Did they go back on the CLA? I’d more readily point out their proprietary software on their gitlab, and their general lack of commitment to FOSS. They made a newly fully proprietary gif service and whatnot, which is just weird for an org promoting FOSS.
unlike stoat which requires to apply to be able to contribute which is suspicious for a supposed open source software.
They’re doing it because they require a Developer Certificate of Origin from contributors in order to mitigate legal liability. Which is probably smart, it’s good to cover your bases when you take on the likes of Discord, who would love to be given an opening to sue and/or obtain a cease & desist on copyright grounds.
tho having to have a certificate does goes against FLOSS values. the goal isnt to make contributing elitist but that anyone can modify it. being scared of legal repercussions for code is like weird since the platform doesnt do illegal things and disallow misusage of the platform or code. any platform disallow to use their platform as a intermediary in a cyberattack. obviously.
Sounds like it… https://blog.fermi.chat/blog/2026/04/26/theFuture/
There are many places where we talk about it, that was a very hastily made post to sooth the community while we were trying to figure stuff out.
https://melodychat.org/blog/melody-launch/
This is the post from Harmony, which has some more information, and was made with a bit more time
So it seems like this aims to be a drop in replacement for discord, essentially supporting the same API and clients, but with the ability to self host. Is that correct?
its not 1 to 1 to discord but it was made to be compatible with discord. mostly to ease the process of migrating bots and automation, and being able to use discord client to connect to harmony. atm you can self host harmony but theres isnt a functional federation yet as it hasnt be coded yet.
