Valour

Valour is an open-source community platform with real-time chat, thread feeds, wikis, and voice, designed by communities for communities.

Try it at app.valour.gg · Learn more at valour.gg

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What Valour is

Communities on Valour live on planets, spaces with real-time chat channels, a reddit-style post feed, a publishable wiki, voice channels, roles and per-channel permissions, and their own economy. The client is built atop the same official API available to bots and applications, and the whole platform, client and server alike, is open source under AGPL.

• No ads. No data selling. No ID or phone verification. An email address is all it takes to join.
• Web app, plus Windows and Android apps (download).
• Move an existing community over with the built-in Discord importer.

Windows and multi-chat

Open multiple chats at once, even across communities. Valour's window system gives you tabs, splits, and resizable panes, letting you multitask and letting moderation teams keep an eye on everything at once. It's your client, after all.

Threads: posts that persist

Every planet can enable a thread feed of lasting posts with comments, boosts, and hot/new/top sorting, so the good conversations don't scroll away. Public thread feeds get their own server-rendered pages at threads.valour.gg, visible to the whole web.

Wikis with public pages

Build your community's knowledge base with a full revision history, search, and a tree of pages, then publish it to the web at wiki.valour.gg/your-vanity-url as a real documentation site.

Voice channels

Drop into voice with your community. Voice runs on managed infrastructure by default, and self-hosted instances (or individual planets) can bring their own LiveKit server instead.

Economies

Planets can deploy a currency in two clicks. Skip managing twenty different bot 'coins' and XP systems. One built-in currency tracks value, lets members pay each other, and hooks into your own systems through the API so your community can reward anything.

Themes, bots, and automation

Restyle the entire client with community-made themes from the theme marketplace. Automate with bots and OAuth apps on the official API, pipe external services in with incoming webhooks, and let the built-in automod handle spam, blocklists, and raids.

Node-based backend

Valour runs as a set of nodes that scale horizontally, so large communities get dedicated resources without losing features. The provider-agnostic design also keeps Valour independent of any single cloud vendor.

Federation

Federation lets a planet move from Valour's official infrastructure to an independently operated community server without giving that server a user's Valour login token. It has two roles:

Role	Purpose	Configuration
Official hub cluster	Accounts, planet registry, node verification, grants, and federation sessions. Every official Valour app instance is a hub-capable replica.	Federation:HubEnabled=true on every official instance; all replicas share the official database and Data Protection KEK.
Community node	Independently hosts planets after its operator proves control of a public domain.	Federation:HubUrl and Federation:NodeDomain; do not enable HubEnabled.

Official Node:WorkerId values distinguish concurrent writers to the shared official database only. They are not federation registrations and community operators neither receive nor compete for them.

A community-node operator starts a public HTTPS server, registers its bare domain in User Settings → Federation on the hub, installs the issued challenge, and verifies it. A planet owner then opens that planet's settings → Federation, enters the verified destination domain, and starts the move. The source planet is read-only while the destination imports a signed snapshot. The owner pastes the resulting grant into User Settings → Federation, verifies the destination, and explicitly finalizes removal of the official source copy. There is no direct community-node-to-community-node move; pull a planet back to the hub first.

Community nodes are closed to other owners by default. Their operator may approve a hub owner or one planet, or deliberately opt into public migration hosting. Clients connect directly to a community node with short-lived, destination-bound federation credentials; the user's real Valour token never leaves the hub. See Federation for the full role model, operator steps, security properties, and migration limits.

Self-hosting

Run your own Valour instance with Docker Compose: Postgres, Redis, local-disk media storage, and automatic HTTPS via Caddy, all on a single domain:

cp .env.example .env   # set your domain, passwords, and admin account
docker compose up -d

Point your domain's DNS at the machine and open https://your-domain. Media is stored on the media volume by default; any S3-compatible storage (R2, MinIO, Garage, B2) works via the CDN__* environment variables, and an optional bundled MinIO is available with docker compose --profile minio up. Optional services (Stripe payments, SendGrid email, Cloudflare RealtimeKit voice, push notifications) activate when configured and the UI adapts automatically. See Config/appsettings.helper.json for every section. Production-cluster deployment (blue/green, nginx) is documented in Docs/Deployment/.

To turn a self-hosted instance into a community node, run the interactive wizard before starting Docker Compose:

./scripts/valour-node-setup

It configures the community-node settings, generates the required private Data Protection KEK, and walks through the public/approval-only migration-hosting choice. The normal self-hosted Compose bundle is a community node, not an official hub replica. See Federation for the registration ceremony and the deployment checklist for production requirements.

Contribute

To contribute to Valour, set up a local server + client environment first.

1) Prerequisites

1. Install the .NET 11 preview SDK (the repo is pinned to 11.0.100-preview.3 in global.json): https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/11.0
2. Use any IDE/editor with modern .NET support (Rider, Visual Studio, VS Code, etc.)
3. Install PostgreSQL: https://www.postgresql.org/
4. Install Redis: https://redis.com/

2) Restore dependencies

From the repo root:

dotnet workload restore
dotnet restore

3) Configure local settings

1. Create Valour/Server/appsettings.json (the file is gitignored).
2. You can start from Config/appsettings.helper.json.
3. Fill in at least these required sections for local startup:
   • Database (Host, Database, Username, Password)
   • Redis (ConnectionString)
   • Node (Key, Name, Location)
4. Optional integrations:
   • CDN for uploads / media storage (S3-compatible)
   • Email for real email delivery
   • Notifications for push notifications
   • Cloudflare for Cloudflare-backed features
     • For RealtimeKit voice, set RealtimeAccountId, RealtimeAppId, and RealtimeApiToken
   • Voice for self-hosted LiveKit voice instead of RealtimeKit (see Docs/Deployment/SelfHostVoice.md)

4) Database setup

Valour applies EF Core migrations automatically on server startup (db.Database.Migrate()).

5) Run locally

Run the server project (it serves API + SignalR + client assets):

cd Valour/Server
dotnet run

Default local URLs:

• https://localhost:5001
• http://localhost:5000

6) Build and test

From the repo root:

dotnet build
dotnet test

Notes

• The active web app flow is centered on Valour.Client.Blazor + server-hosted assets.
• You generally should not need to manually edit ValourClient.cs BaseAddress for normal local development.
• Docker images are published by CI to ghcr.io/valour-software/valour, but still require valid appsettings and backing services (Postgres/Redis/etc.).

Trademark Notice

The name "Valour" is a trademark of Valour Software LLC, and a trademark application is pending. While the project is open-source, use of the trademark must not imply endorsement by Valour Software LLC or mislead others regarding the origin of the project.

Forks or derivative projects may not use the name "Valour" or related branding without prior written permission from Valour Software LLC. Any use of the trademark outside the scope of this project requires explicit permission.

While use of the trademark is not permitted for forks of the project itself, use of the mark is allowed for Valour bots, plugins, or integrations. If you are unsure, contact us!