A ByteFoundry product
Babylon
Babylon

Chat · Voice · Screen share · Command nets · Self-hosted

Works like the app you know. Lives on your box.

One of you owns a box. Chat, voice, screen share and boards all live on it, and nobody upstream can pull the plug. The rest of your lot don't have to learn a thing.

We built it for gaming groups. Squad nights, op nights, a crew on the pit wall. A club or six mates get the same thing. Underneath sits the difference: ranked radio channels, for the nights that need order.

The key features

One window: channels, comms, chat, people.

Interface mockup The real client layout and colours. The conversation is made up.
Chat

Text channels with replies, reactions, pins and edits. Files and images in a gallery; video and audio play in place.

 Voice

Our own voice server, written from the protocol up. Push-to-talk, noise suppression, per-person volume, and it reconnects itself.

 Screen share

A monitor or one window, 1080p at 60. Anyone sharing gets a LIVE tag; click it to watch.

 Command nets

Ranked radio channels under the voice channels. Listen to a couple of dozen at once; higher ranks fade the rest.

 Boards

Kanban boards and a shared whiteboard beside your channels, with named cursors. They're plugins — build your own.

 Roles

One rulebook covers chat, voice, apps and nets. Lockdown switches, raid detection, AutoMod, a reports queue.

Also in the box: the desktop app for Linux and Windows, sign-in on your own box, and the operator's kit — that one's on Running it. The full list, checked against the code, is on Features.

Underneath

The order gets through.

Forty people on an op night. The leads talk over their wings, command talks over the leads, and when the caller on top presses the key, everything else fades down under them — quieter, not gone. Nobody mutes anyone.

That's a net. Listen to two dozen at once, talk on one. How the nets work.

Why it exists

No off switch above you.

Governments block platforms; platforms close servers and silence groups. Babylon removes the layer those decisions travel through. Your server is a box your group owns, and nobody stands above whoever runs it.

It won't make you invisible. Voice isn't end-to-end encrypted yet; per-net encryption is parked on the roadmap. Owning the box removes the lever: no operator to pressure, no account to close, no history deleted from above.

ByteFoundry is the independent workshop behind it, building tools for communities that refuse to rent their infrastructure. Babylon is the first, named for a space station where everyone could talk.

Where it's heading

Early days, plenty on the board.

It runs on our hardware while it's being built. No download yet. The source isn't published either; putting it up is on the board. Linux and Windows, no webcam.

Up first, the everyday habits: @mentions (in test now), direct messages, message search, unread badges.

The rest is on the roadmap, straight off the work board. No dates, and there won't be.