Self-hosted. User-owned. Zero dependencies. Chirm, Deep, Perch, and Flock form a three-tier ecosystem where the answer to "who has power?" is always the participants.
Three tiers of infrastructure — community, personal, physical — each removing one dependency so participants hold the power at every layer.
Community Chat
Channels, voice, files. A single binary on a Raspberry Pi. Your server, your community. Removes the corporate platform.
Extended Infrastructure
Same space with more capacity. SFU voice, Signal Protocol, server-side transcoding, optional PostgreSQL. Binary-swap upgrade from Main.
Blog & Identity
Your blog, your profile, your portable identity. Self-hosted with automated DDNS and TLS. Removes the admin from your identity.
Proximity Exchange
Two devices, one protocol, zero infrastructure. Bluetooth LE, WiFi Direct, or future transports. Removes the internet itself.
Instead of servers talking to servers, the Chirm ecosystem puts users at the centre. Identity is self-hosted and portable. Communication routes directly. Discovery happens through proximity and participation, not algorithmic amplification.
| Product | Dependency Removed | Sovereignty Gained | Trade-off Accepted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chirm Main | Corporate platforms | Community ownership | Self-hosting ops |
| Chirm Deep | Hardware limitations | Scaled capacity | Heavier infrastructure |
| Perch | Server admin control | Identity + content portability | Always-on for DMs |
| Flock | Internet connectivity | Physical-layer exchange | Active app, range limits |
Phases 0–5 · Single Binary · Pi-Aligned
The community layer. Six phases taking Chirm from a functional baseline to a polished, extensible, themeable platform with a bot framework and rich media plugins.
User-facing quality before structural changes. Highest ROI — shapes every new user's first impression.
Security audit, documentation, and testing foundation. The gate before external contributors and the safety net for Phase 2's refactor.
The structural work that enables everything else. The v1.0.0 tag signals API stability — the foundation the entire ecosystem builds on.
Chirm's 30+ CSS variables make this lower-effort than starting from scratch. The JSON theme format defined here is shared with Perch — one format, two products.
First test of Phase 2's plugin architecture. Each plugin is optional and toggleable. Main keeps them lightweight — heavy transcoding stays in Deep.
Built-in management bot plus external integration API, designed for Main's single-process model.
Phases D1–D2 · Extended Infrastructure · The Scaling Layer
Deep extends Main for workloads exceeding Pi-class hardware. It imports Main as a dependency and adds service layers. Migration is a binary swap — same data directory, same config, same database.
Replace P2P mesh with a Selective Forwarding Unit for rooms beyond 5–6 participants.
Heavy media operations requiring ffmpeg and sustained CPU.
Self-Hosted Blog · Portable Identity · The User Layer
Where Chirm creates community spaces controlled by admins, Perch creates individual spaces controlled by users. A self-hosted blog and identity platform that stands alone as a publishing tool and integrates with Chirm for those who choose it.
Standalone blog and identity platform, valuable before any Chirm integration. Ships with all infrastructure plumbing needed for P2 and P3.
Connecting Perch identities to Chirm servers. Requires Chirm Main v1.0.0 for the external auth hook.
Perch-to-Perch communication. Blog platform becomes social network without central infrastructure.
Proximity Exchange · No Internet · The Physical Layer
Two devices exchange data over radio. No server, no connection, no account required at the moment of exchange. The entire network is people in the same physical space.
Mobile app with device-to-device exchange. The protocol is defined at the logical layer, independent of physical transport.
Optional infrastructure for extending Flock's reach beyond direct proximity.
Solo developer pace. Sequencing matters more than dates. Perch P1 and Chirm Phase 2 develop in parallel as separate codebases sharing architectural patterns.
Chirm Main Phases 0 + 1. Polish the user experience, harden security, build the testing foundation and documentation that gates external contributions.
The pivotal quarter. Chirm Phase 2 delivers the architecture refactor and v1.0.0 API stability. Simultaneously, Perch P1 begins as a separate codebase. Deep enters design phase.
Chirm Main gets theming and media plugins. Deep D1 delivers the SFU. Perch ships P1 and begins the Chirm Bridge. Flock protocol spec starts.
The ecosystem comes together. Chirm Main Phase 5 delivers the bot framework. Deep D2 adds transcoding. Perch P3 enables social features. Flock F1 ships the core exchange.
Polish, maintain, and grow. Perch P3 evolves its social layer. Flock F2 adds relays and future transport bindings. Community contributions expand the plugin ecosystem.
Every layer answers the same question differently:
what stands between the user and their goal, and how do we remove it?
Chirm removes the platform.
Deep removes the constraint.
Perch removes the admin.
Flock removes the internet.
No product requires any other. Each ships value independently. Together they form a three-tier ecosystem where at every layer the participants have the power and nobody else does.
