Snikket Goals

Overview

Snikket is an ambitious project to build a new kind of XMPP-based messaging platform.

Until now, the XMPP ecosystem has been very fragmented - a collection of projects with a mixture of different designs, terminologies and quality. Diversity is excellent, and the foundation of any healthy ecosystem. But we also need to have some amount of consistency. Snikket aims to provide this consistency, and provide a friendly entrance to the world of XMPP.

Snikket aims to:

  • Provide an XMPP client for every major platform, with each client having consistent branding, terminology, and features.
  • Provide a simple XMPP service that is easy to deploy and maintain, and provides all the necessary features for Snikket clients out of the box.

The primary use case for Snikket currently is secure personal messaging. That is, we are aiming to provide an open alternative to proprietary messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, and Telegram.

Snikket is currently not aiming to be a replacement for enterprise/team chat solutions such as Slack, Discord, RocketChat or Mattermost. This may change in the future as resources allow, but right now we want to focus on doing one thing and doing it well.

Roadmap

This section gives a high-level overview of some of the largest tasks on our roadmap. It is an evolving document, and will be updated as the project progresses.

Snikket iOS client

Providing a client for Apple devices is currenly one of the priority items for the project, to allow Snikket to be usable by a broader audience.

None of the existing open-source clients currently meet the requirements of a Snikket client. Achieving this goal will require investment in additional features and UX work in one of these clients.

Siskin is currently the most likely candidate, but there are a number of issues that need to be resolved first.

Web admin dashboard

Currently operating the Snikket server requires a number of tasks to be performed using command-line tools, such as creating an invitation and managing users. The goal is to provide a very straightforward web interface for common administrative tasks.

User portal

Similarly to the web admin dashboard, there are certain actions that a Snikket user should be able to make without assistance from the server administrator. This includes:

  • Password reset and device management
  • Updating their profile
  • Import/export/migration of their data

Work on this has begun at snikket-web-portal!

Server deployment integrations

There are a number of potential places where Snikket can be better integrated, e.g. self-hosting services and distributions such as YunoHost and Sandstorm.io.

Snikket web client

As a first step towards accessing Snikket from non-mobile platforms, we intend to launch a web client for Snikket.

Supporting us

We welcome contributions of all kinds! You can help support the project by:

  • Working directly on the code
  • Writing or translating documentation
  • Donating to the project

We’re always happy to hear from people, join the community!