Decent

Join a server | Host a server | Documentation

Decent is the decentralized chat that's absolutely okay.

• Decentralized: anyone can host a Decent server, and clients can connect to many at once, regardless of origin
• Feature-rich: ∞ animated emoticons, for example
• Won't harvest your data: unlike some
• Hipster: more on that here
• Open source: 🎈

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Join a server

List of known Decent servers:

• meta.decent.chat - official server for discussing the development of Decent itself
• Host your own!

Most Decent servers will serve a copy of the web client, so you can use that to access servers (any client can connect to any Decent server, regardless of origin). Alternatively, custom clients exist:

• Weechat

If you're someone who wants to run your own Decent server, read the following:

Installation

You will need:

• A recent version of Node.js - n helps here
• A recent version of your favourite web browser

Important: Decent is not currently published to npm. You need to install from source.

> npm install -g @decent/cli

> mkdir my-decent-database
> decent 8000 /path/to/database/directory

# visit http://localhost:8000

You'll probably need to make a channel, but to do that, you'll need to make an admin user. Start by registering a user through your web browser (just click on the register button); once you've done that, type make-admin (the username you picked) into the CLI:

decent> make-admin avjoe
Made avjoe an admin.

Then you can create a channel by logging in on the browser (you know, click the "login" button) and clicking on the "New" button next to the (empty) channel list.

Important config options

If you're planning to serve over HTTPS, execute:

decent> set https on

If you're want to make your server private/invite-only, execute:

decent> set requireAuthorization on

From source

> git clone https://github.com/decent-chat/decent
> cd decent

> npx lerna bootstrap
> npx lerna run build

> cd packages/cli
> npm install --global

> decent 8000 /path/to/database/directory

Contributing

Important: You'll need to install from git rather than npm to contribute!

See CONTRIBUTING for codestyle guidelines so we don't have to ask you to fix your PRs. Thanks!

This repository is a lerna monorepo, consisting of:

• @decent/server - implementation of the Decent server API
• decent.js - library for interacting with Decent servers
• @decent/client - web-based client for Decent servers
• @decent/cli - CLI interface for the above

Come visit us at meta.decent.chat!

License

GPL-3.0