Building in
public.

No secret backlog. No "we'll get to it." Here's exactly what we're working on, what's next, and what's on the horizon.

22 shipped · 23 remaining across 4 milestones · Last updated Feb 2026

Digital sovereignty.

Your community belongs to you — not to a platform that can change the rules, sell your data, or shut you down. Digital sovereignty means you control where your conversations live, who can access them, and what happens to them.

Communities should be supported by their users — not mined by their platforms. Pay for what you need, what's cheap is free. Text chat, custom emoji, themes, and appearance cost us nearly nothing to serve — so they're free, forever. Paid tiers cover the things that actually cost money: higher-quality voice and video, more file storage, and larger upload limits.

Open Source Client
See what runs on your machine. Fork it, mod it, make it yours.
Self-Hostable Server
Community edition. Your hardware, your rules, your data. Full Docker stack.
Managed Hosting
For communities that want it handled. Real infrastructure, not ad subsidies.
✓ Shipped Already Built

Shortwave isn't a pitch deck. These features are working today.

✓ Shipped
Real-time text chat
Channels, DMs, rich text, link embeds with preview. Built on IRC (Ergo) with a modern WebSocket bridge.
✓ Shipped
P2P voice chat
WebRTC mesh for small groups. Join a room, talk. No plugins, no downloads, no third-party relay.
✓ Shipped
Auth & Account Management
NickServ credential registration with JWT session layer. Account management panel. Robust signup flow on main site. No email required.
✓ Shipped
File uploads & sharing
S3-backed file storage with upload management. Share images, files, and media in channels.
✓ Shipped
Custom emotes
Upload and manage custom emoji for your community. No paywall.
✓ Shipped
Link previews & embeds
Server-side URL unfurling with rich previews. OpenGraph, Twitter cards, oEmbed.
✓ Shipped
TURN relay support
Credential generation for NAT traversal. Voice works even behind strict firewalls.
✓ Shipped
Infrastructure as code
Full Terraform stack — compute, networking, DNS, storage, TURN server. One command to deploy.
✓ Shipped
Docker Compose stack
Ergo IRCd + Shortwave server + client, ready to self-host. Dev and production configs included.
#35 ✓ Shipped
Voice presence tracking
Device-based presence, channel sidebar indicators, active speaker detection, multi-device conflict resolution.
#16 ✓ Shipped
Session persistence across refresh
Page refresh no longer forces re-login. Session credentials restored automatically.
#20 ✓ Shipped
Reconnection UX
Smart reconnect on tab focus, retryable auth errors, reconnect counter reset.

22 shipped · 23 remaining
Alpha -> Early Access
Phase 1 Launch Ready

Security hardening, account basics, and the product fundamentals that make people stay past day one. After this phase, we open early access.

#31 ✓ Shipped
Standalone web registration
Account signup decoupled from the IRC client. Beta key validation, server-proxied registration, success redirect to login.
feature
#30 ◐ In progress
Onboarding and invite flow
Beta-gated registration, pre-filled invite keys, default channel auto-join. Still needed: welcome modal, channel suggestions, invite link generation.
feature
#26
Account self-service
Password resets, session management, account deletion. Can't ship a product where users get locked out with no recourse.
feature
#28 ✓ Shipped
Web push notifications
PWA service worker push. The #1 retention driver -- without it, Shortwave is a tab people forget about.
feature
#29 ✓ Shipped
Notification settings
Per-channel controls: mute, mention-only, all messages. Quiet hours. The difference between useful and annoying.
feature
#1 ✓ Shipped
Signed URL file access
Pre-signed S3 URLs for secure file access. Files only accessible via time-limited, authenticated URLs.
security
#2 ✓ Shipped
SSRF protection on embed fetcher
URL validation and blocklists prevent internal network access from embed fetcher.
security
#3 ✓ Shipped
API rate limiting
Per-endpoint rate limits with exponential backoff and client retry logic.
security
#4 ✓ Shipped
CORS lockdown
Strict origin allowlist for API endpoints. No wildcard access.
security
#5 ✓ Shipped
Firewall rules
DigitalOcean cloud firewall with strict ingress rules. SSH, HTTP/HTTPS, and app-specific ports only.
infra
#6 ✓ Shipped
Monitoring and alerting
Terraform-managed DigitalOcean alerts for memory and bandwidth across all droplets. Email notifications to ops.
infra
#7
Voice room size limits
feature
#8
Database backups
infra
#34
Community instancing and load balancing
Isolate communities across infrastructure with routing and resource limits. Without this, one viral community kills everyone on the shared server.
infra

Phase 2 Public Launch

Feature parity, security depth, and the tools communities need to govern themselves. After this phase, Shortwave opens to everyone.


Phase 3 Scale & Polish

The difference between "works" and "works well." Performance, resilience, and quality-of-life for growing communities.


Service Infrastructure Hosted Service

What makes the official Shortwave service worth paying for. These power the Station tier -- managed infrastructure so you don't have to run your own.


On the Horizon The Bigger Picture

Where Shortwave is headed. Not tracked as issues yet -- these are the bets we're making on the future of chat.

Vision
Nostr global identity
One identity across every Shortwave server -- official and self-hosted. Nostr keypairs as the identity layer. No central authority, no vendor lock-in.
Vision
Native mobile apps
iOS and Android. PWA works today, but native means background audio and deeper OS integration. Desktop app ships first.
Vision
Bot & integration API
Extensible without bloat. Build what you need, don't wait for us to ship what you don't.
Vision
Data sovereignty
Import from Discord and other platforms. Full data exports for self-hosters. Your community, your data, your rules.

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