Commune

Commune is a matrix client that makes spaces and rooms publicly accessible on the web. Current development efforts are focused on the public read-only mode, with longterm goals for building out all expected chat client features.

The optional appservice needs to be run separately only if you want Commune to display public rooms to guests. Without the appservice, Commune should work as a normal matrix client.

This project is under active development and the native client portion is not yet ready for production use.

There is a live instance of this client running on commune.sh

Running

Commune is a sveltekit SSR app and should run on any platform that supports it, including cloud platforms that can deploy static SSR apps (Cloudflare Pages). The default configuration uses @sveltejs/adapter-auto. Update the adapter to suit your environment. Follow these steps to run Commune on Node using the @sveltejs/adapter-node.

1. Clone this repo
2. Copy .env.example to .env and update the values to point at your matrix homeserver.
3. Update the adapter to Node, as instructed here.
4. Run node build.

Configuration.

Commune requires these ENV variables to be set. Below is an example:

PUBLIC_APP_NAME=Commune 
PUBLIC_BASE_URL=https://commune.sh
PUBLIC_HOMESERVER=https://matrix.commune.sh 
PUBLIC_HOMESERVER_BASE_URL=https://commune.sh
PUBLIC_HOMESERVER_NAME=commune.sh
PUBLIC_ALLOW_OTHER_HOMESERVERS=false
PUBLIC_META_TITLE=Commune
PUBLIC_META_IMAGE=https://static.commune.sh/card.png
PUBLIC_META_DESCRIPTION=Matrix-powered public communities
PUBLIC_DEFAULT_THEME=dark

By default, the client will only work with one specfic matrix homeserver. To enable the user to change the homeserver, set PUBLIC_ALLOW_OTHER_HOMESERVERS to true.

Public Appservice

The appservice requires no additional configuration. Commune queries the matrix homeserver's /.well-known/matrix/client endpoint to find the appservice.

Deploying

If you're running Commune on Node, you'll most likely want to put the app behind an nginx reverse-proxy.

location / {
  proxy_pass http://localhost:5173;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
  proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
  proxy_set_header Host $host;
}

Development

For development, you will need a locally running matrix server. Clone this repo, copy the .env.example file to .env and run npm run dev.

Community

To keep up to date with Commune development, you can find us on #commune:commune.sh or #commune:matrix.org.