Braid is a team-chat app with a novel UI that leads to better conversations

Braid is an experimental team chat application with a novel UI: instead of chatrooms, it's based on many short conversations. You can think of Braid as an email/mailing-list/web-forum/chatroom hybrid, but without the constant interruptions and FOMO of Slack. It's particularly good for remote-first companies, developer teams and online communities. Braid is also open-source, so you can hack on it and host your own version.

You can read more about Braid and then give Braid a try .

Braid's not as polished as Slack yet, but it's got most of the features you'd expect from other chat clients:

• public and private conversations
• archives + search
• file sharing
• notifications
• email digests
• code formatting and emoji
• integrations support

It's been our daily driver for over a year, but there are still some rough edges and things we want to improve; notably:

• better mobile apps
• better 1:1 integrations
• polishing non-critical UI (ex. settings)
• moderation tools
• and more...

Contributing

1. If you like the concept, please let us know!

   Your feedback is the fuel that pushes us too keep working on Braid. Say hello on braid@braid , and let us know what you think.

2. Try Braid out on your team/group and give us feedback.

   You can set up a free team on braid.chat and message us on braid@braid to give feedback.

3. If you want to code...

   Check out the Getting Started instructions below. @rafd and @jamesnvc are available to pair remotely if you'd like help getting started. Message us on braid@braid and we can help match you with a good task and debug any issues you run into.

There's also opportunities to help with triaging issues, writing docs and other non-"dev" work.

Bugs and feature requests are tracked via Github Issues

Thank you to all of our contributors !

Getting Started

To get Braid working locally, see: Developing Braid

If you want to deploy it in production, see Deploying Braid

If you just want to use Braid, but not set it up yourself, you can get a hosted account at: https://www.braidchat.com

Repositories

• The Primary Repo

  https://github.com/braidchat/braid

  API server, desktop web client, mobile web client, docs

• Native Desktop Client

  https://github.com/braidchat/electron

  An Electron app that wraps the desktop web client

• Native Mobile Client

  https://github.com/braidchat/cordova

  A Cordova app that wraps the mobile web client

• Other Repos

  https://github.com/braidchat

  Other repos, including sample bots, marketing materials, and miscellany.

License

Braid may be freely used under the AGPL license .

As per the AGPL, you can use Braid for personal or commercial purposes for free, but, you must publically release any modifications to the software (under the same license). If you need to make private modifications you can purchase a commercial license by contacting licensing@braidchat.com