River – serverless group chat application

River is a serverless group chat application that operates over Freenet’s global peer-to-peer network.

Rooms persist without a dedicated host, central service, homeserver, relay or blockchain.

It offers browser-based access on desktop and mobile, together with an optional command-line client for automation, bots and AI agents.

Nobody runs a server for River, and nobody self-hosts: every room lives on Freenet, a network made up of the computers of the people who run it. Because the network caches and serves each room from nodes near whoever’s asking, a busy room gets more capacity as it gets more popular, the opposite of the server model where traffic is a bill someone has to pay.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• Real-time group conversations over the Freenet network.
• Public and private rooms.
• End-to-end encryption for private rooms using AES-256-GCM.
• Persistent rooms that remain available when their creator is offline.
• One-click invitation links.
• Invitation-tree moderation with delegated management and banning.
• Browser interface suitable for desktop and mobile devices.
• Command-line client for scripting, bots and AI agents.
• Cryptographically signed messages, membership changes and room state.

Website: github.com/freenet/river
Support:
Developer: Freenet Project
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0

River is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

This program was suggested by a visitor who completed the software form.

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