{"slug": "chatto", "name": "Chatto", "category": "communication", "category_name": "Email and chat", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 7, "warners": 1, "score": 3.34, "rising": 1.35, "first": "2026-07-08", "latest": "2026-10-15", "why": "And kudos for backing it up with real guidance. Great project.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "And kudos for backing it up with real guidance. Great project.", "icon": true, "domain": "chatto.run", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://chatto.run", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Chatto"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801761040, "item_id": 50110065, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50110065", "by": "mertbio", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out this: https://chatto.run/", "excerpt": "Check out this: https://chatto.run/", "context": "", "use_case": "open source Discord alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Open Source Discord"}, {"id": 798144608, "item_id": 49884038, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49884038", "by": "IceWreck", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Its actually well engineered (not vbibecoded), the devs are responsive", "excerpt": "I have switched to https://chatto.run/. Its actually well engineered (not vbibecoded), the devs are responsive and is kinda opinionated instead of do everything and we cater for every possible scenario but be great at nothing like matrix.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted community chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)"}, {"id": 781667680, "item_id": 48854230, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854230", "by": "Centigonal", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Chatto looks great", "excerpt": "Yes, I am. I think Chatto looks great, and I use AI in my job every single day. I've been following OpenAI since MuseNet. I'm uncomfortable about the coming Kuznets curve for AI, the wealth concentrating effects, the energy use, the stunting effects on human intelligence and connection, and the abuse of training data associated with AI. I am that \"let's take a nuanced approach and find out how we can get most of the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781339424, "item_id": 48833714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833714", "by": "wxw", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "And kudos for backing it up with real guidance. Great project.", "excerpt": "> It\u2019s 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-c", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 789728144, "item_id": 49358009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358009", "by": "frevib", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I wouldn\u2019t trust any of my personal information to it.", "excerpt": "Great effort, thanks for that. But do we still trust the open source software that is created now everything is vibe coded? Recently there was a thread about Chatto [1], a Slack replacement completely vibe coded by one person. It works and looks nice. But looking at the code, I wouldn\u2019t trust any of my personal information to it. It\u2019s just tousands of lines of skills and vague instructions. It seems that trust in OSS", "context": "", "use_case": "Slack replacement", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenLogi"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["open source discord alternative", "self-hosted community chat", "slack replacement", "team chat", "self-hosted chat", "family and friends chat"], "compared": [{"slug": "discord", "name": "Discord", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "slack", "name": "Slack", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "matrix", "name": "Matrix", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 781490641, "item_id": 48843165, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843165", "by": "hendrikmans", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Hi, Chatto developer here.", "excerpt": "Hi, Chatto developer here. NATS and its built-in Jetstream stream persistence engine are a miracle. I love them both so much. And if your app is itself written in Go, you can just embed them for simple deployment scenarios (like Chatto does.)", "context": "Chatto developer", "use_case": "chat platform", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781485761, "item_id": 48842860, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842860", "by": "hendrikmans", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Chatto is designed, on purpose, to serve individual communities from tiny deployments", "excerpt": "I love Fluxer! Hampus is cool and what he's built is super impressive. I would say the primary difference is that Chatto doesn't squarely aim for being a _Discord_ alternative. There are no plans for providing a Discord-compatible API (which I think Fluxer does.) The other main difference is that Chatto is designed, on purpose, to serve individual communities from tiny deployments, instead of large mega-instances tha", "context": "Chatto developer", "use_case": "self-hosted team chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781484144, "item_id": 48842759, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842759", "by": "hendrikmans", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "compare", "quote": "this is definitely aiming to be an alternative to Slack, Teams, Mattermost et al.", "excerpt": "In terms of inspiration and also the market that I want to go after with Chatto Cloud, this is definitely aiming to be an alternative to Slack, Teams, Mattermost et al. I've tried to make it friendly and casual enough to _also_ work as a Discord alternative, though.", "context": "Chatto developer", "use_case": "team chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781339920, "item_id": 48833745, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833745", "by": "moeffju", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On desktop, it's my daily driver for Chatto.", "excerpt": "I created a Tauri based app but IMO it's not ready for prime time on mobile. On desktop, it's my daily driver for Chatto. If anybody wants to contribute, the foundation (desktop & mobile) is at https://github.com/teal-bauer/chatto-tauri", "context": "", "use_case": "daily chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833116", "title": "Chatto is now Open Source", "mentions": 8}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50110020", "title": "Open Source Discord", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49873048", "title": "Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355606", "title": "OpenLogi", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"warn": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801761040, "item_id": 50110065, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50110065", "by": "mertbio", "date": "2026-10-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out this: https://chatto.run/", "excerpt": "Check out this: https://chatto.run/", "context": "", "use_case": "open source Discord alternative", "switched_from": "", "story": "Open Source Discord"}, {"id": 798144608, "item_id": 49884038, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49884038", "by": "IceWreck", "date": "2026-09-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Its actually well engineered (not vbibecoded), the devs are responsive", "excerpt": "I have switched to https://chatto.run/. Its actually well engineered (not vbibecoded), the devs are responsive and is kinda opinionated instead of do everything and we cater for every possible scenario but be great at nothing like matrix.", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted community chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)"}, {"id": 789728144, "item_id": 49358009, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49358009", "by": "frevib", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I wouldn\u2019t trust any of my personal information to it.", "excerpt": "Great effort, thanks for that. But do we still trust the open source software that is created now everything is vibe coded? Recently there was a thread about Chatto [1], a Slack replacement completely vibe coded by one person. It works and looks nice. But looking at the code, I wouldn\u2019t trust any of my personal information to it. It\u2019s just tousands of lines of skills and vague instructions. It seems that trust in OSS", "context": "", "use_case": "Slack replacement", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenLogi"}, {"id": 781667680, "item_id": 48854230, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48854230", "by": "Centigonal", "date": "2026-07-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think Chatto looks great", "excerpt": "Yes, I am. I think Chatto looks great, and I use AI in my job every single day. I've been following OpenAI since MuseNet. I'm uncomfortable about the coming Kuznets curve for AI, the wealth concentrating effects, the energy use, the stunting effects on human intelligence and connection, and the abuse of training data associated with AI. I am that \"let's take a nuanced approach and find out how we can get most of the ", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781450512, "item_id": 48840657, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48840657", "by": "suis_siva", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I'll give Chatto a shot, but one of the things I'd love to have is interop with Slack and Discord.", "excerpt": "Wow! I've tried (and failed) to implement a chat application which parries slack and it sounds like the direction you're going in with Chatto is precisely what I was envisioning. I'll give Chatto a shot, but one of the things I'd love to have is interop with Slack and Discord. Is that on the roadmap or no? I saw that there's a Slack -> Chatto migration tool, but the unfortunate reality is that Slack is used by custom", "context": "", "use_case": "team chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781339424, "item_id": 48833714, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833714", "by": "wxw", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "And kudos for backing it up with real guidance. Great project.", "excerpt": "> It\u2019s 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-c", "context": "", "use_case": "self-hosted chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}, {"id": 781337729, "item_id": 48833608, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48833608", "by": "npodbielski", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "if mobile will be a thing this seems like perfect thing to have for your family and friends.", "excerpt": "Ah mobile app is not ready yet. I am looking for some alternative to matrix because running it with bots is a bit convoluted, i.e. you have to have limit of edits of message for model streaming or you will kill entire room. Or I never seen robots in matrix sending encrypted messages. Why bother than? Anyway if mobile will be a thing this seems like perfect thing to have for your family and friends.", "context": "", "use_case": "family and friends chat", "switched_from": "", "story": "Chatto is now Open Source"}]}