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why onyx
Onyx is a small, independent chat network kept with care — and the same thing is a piece of software you can run yourself. Open it in a browser tab and pick a nick, or build the AGPL Onyx Server daemon from source into one static binary. Either way it’s a network no company owns and no one can switch off. The first-party Onyx app and the open server engine are separate deliverables.
Most chat gives you one option: use their servers, on their terms. Onyx gives you two doors into the exact same network — and both are open right now.
Door one · join ours
No account, no download, no invite to wait on. Open Onyx in a browser tab and you’re talking in seconds — or bring a thirty-year-old IRC client over TLS to the very same rooms. Same network, your choice of front door.
Door two · run your own
The same daemon we run is a single static binary with zero external dependencies — no database, no OpenSSL to patch, no runtime to install. Download the published v0.5.6 static binary, verify it, then point it at the quickstart config. Keep it standalone, or link it into our mesh.
curl -fLO https://github.com/devinkbrown/onyx-server/releases/download/v0.5.6/onyx-server-0.5.6-x86_64-linux-musl
Pure Zig, AGPL‑3.0, a reproducible musl build you can verify from source. There is no registry image yet — Docker remains a build‑then‑run path. Client stays product sauce.
Self-host guideNot a feature race — a short list of things that are true here and rare elsewhere, each one running on the live network today.
A network no company owns, from an AGPL daemon you can run yourself. Nothing to monetise, no one to sell your attention to, no plug to pull. That’s the whole point — everything below is downstream of it.
One serpent, many heads: nodes federate over an encrypted mesh, so your node can stand alone or join ours without asking permission.
Direct-message keys are derived and sealed on your device — us included, nobody in the middle can read them. Pin a contact’s key and you’re warned the moment it changes.
Sign in with your device and a fingerprint or face — no password to phish, leak, or reuse. Cloaked hosts mean who you are here is never your IP address, either.
Come back to a calm catch-up on Home instead of a wall of scrollback, and scroll to any past moment — history lives in a local-first vault on your own device, searchable.
Give a thread a name and it stays put — a topic you can point people at, not a message that scrolls away by lunch.
Servers link over a hybrid post-quantum key exchange, so today’s conversation can’t be unlocked by tomorrow’s computers. Voice and video rooms of up to 64 seats — with spatial audio in the browser — are part of the protocol, not a bolt-on.
Built to target WCAG 2.2 AA and EN 301 549, and checked in the open on a public conformance ledger. And it has a face — a warm, deep-water atmosphere, not another gray dashboard.
No war table, no fear. Just the honest trade you’re actually making, depending on where you’re moving from.
From a company-run chat
The comfort of a modern client, without the surveillance economics or the risk that a company reprices, sunsets, or de-platforms the room you built. Nobody can switch this off. The trade: you don’t get a giant walled directory of strangers — you get a network that’s yours.
From a heavier self-host stack
No database to babysit, no OpenSSL to patch, no runtime to install — a single static binary that ships its own TLS 1.3, its own mesh, its own services. The trade: it’s a younger, smaller ecosystem than the big federated platforms, on purpose.
From classic IRC
Persistent history, search, encrypted DMs, voice and video, and a browser client — without leaving IRC behind. Bring your thirty-year-old client and it still works. The trade: it’s one young network, not the whole sprawling IRC world.
Being honest about the fit is a feature. Onyx is built for a certain kind of room, and cheerfully isn’t built for another.