// the find
Sharkord/sharkord
Lightweight, self-hosted, open-source chat server with voice, video, text, and screen sharing. Built for small groups who want privacy, simplicity, and full control over their data.
Sharkord is a self-hosted Discord clone — voice, video, text, screen sharing, all in a single binary. It targets small teams or friend groups who want to run their own communication stack without depending on Discord's infrastructure or privacy policies. Alpha software, so expect rough edges.
The single-binary distribution is a genuine win for self-hosting: no Node.js runtime to manage, no separate frontend server, just download and run. The tech choices are solid — mediasoup for WebRTC SFU (the right call for multi-party video), tRPC for end-to-end type safety, Drizzle ORM. The plugin system is already present in alpha, which is the right time to design it before the API surface hardens. Docker setup is minimal and correct — one TCP port plus a UDP range for RTP, data volume mapped.
Alpha with no stated timeline is a real risk for anyone considering adoption — the ROADMAP.md exists but the README warns of breaking changes with no migration story. There is no mention of E2E encryption anywhere; for a privacy-pitched product, running unencrypted messages through your own server is only marginally better than Discord unless you control the server. The plugin marketplace is an external dependency on Sharkord's own hosted service, which reintroduces the centralization problem the project claims to solve. 1374 stars and 122 forks is thin for infrastructure software you are trusting with comms — the bus factor looks high and the contributor count in the git history is probably small.