proto instant messenger
Free video calls for anyone. No Apple ID required.
Works with Blacksky, Bluesky, or any atproto account. No new sign-up needed.
Beta · under construction
proto town: walk up and talk
A little pixel world where your ATProto identity is your character. Walk up to someone and you're in a conversation. No links to send, no meeting to schedule, no lobby to wait in.
- Your character is you: your rpg.actor sprite, your handle, your buddy list. No new account and no avatar to build. Hold Space to sprint.
- Walk up, start talking: get close to someone and a purple aura links you. Voice connects on its own, and the closer you stand, the louder they are.
- Camera when you want it: your mic and camera stay off until you turn them on. Other people's video starts hidden until you choose to show it, and your camera switches off the moment someone new walks up.
- Knock, and they decide: your inner circle can knock on your door, and you choose “let in” or “not now”. Anything but “let in” just looks like no answer, so nobody can tell you said no. Ask a guest to leave any time, or close your door to knocks.
- Ask to join: in someone's neighborhood you only see your mutuals. Next to a conversation with people who aren't, you can ask to join. They all have to agree, and it lasts only while you stay.
- Blocks follow you: people you've blocked can't see you, hear you, end up in a conversation with you, or walk into your neighborhood, even while you're offline.
Where you stand is who sees you
Each place is its own space, laid out like your buddy list's trust tiers, so privacy is a place you walk to, not a setting you forget to flip. Your online status follows you too.
Home Inner circle Where you spawn: your own lamplit room. Nobody walks in uninvited. Your inner circle can knock, and you decide who comes in. Your window glows for them while you're home. 
Neighborhood Community Out your front door, behind your own gate. People in your community can visit. Inside, everyone sees the owner and their mutuals, and nobody else. Town square Everyone Out past your gate: a plaza with a gate to every friend's neighborhood. Anyone can see you and walk up to talk, or switch on friends-of-friends mode to keep it to people two steps away. What it is
AIM-inspired video chat, rebuilt for the open social web. Like FaceTime, Google Meet, and Zoom, but open, free, and we never track or sell your data.
Video calls
Free, WebRTC-powered. iPhone to Android, laptop to tablet. Pure P2P for your inner circle, relayed for everyone else to keep your IP private. All self-hosted, nothing leaked to third parties.
Buddy list
See who's online, set your status, one-click video call anyone. Organize contacts into trust tiers: Everyone, Community, and Inner Circle, each with its own privacy level.
Instant messages
Peer-to-peer via WebRTC data channels when both people are online. Device-to-device, nothing on the server. Trust-aware routing: pure P2P for inner circle, relay for everyone else.
proto town
A pixel world where your ATProto identity is your character. Walk up to someone and you're talking: voice connects automatically, camera when you want it. Your home is private and your inner circle knocks, your neighborhood is for your community, and the town square is open to all. (Beta)
Auto-translation
Public chat rooms and your feed auto-translated across 16 languages, fully self-hosted. IMs and video are P2P, so they never touch our servers and can't be translated. By design.
Part of something bigger
proto IM is one piece of the ATProto messaging stack. We don't do everything, on purpose. Germ handles persistent, end-to-end encrypted DMs with MLS. Roomy handles open-source group chat and community spaces, like Discord but decentralized. We handle video calls and the buddy list. Three independent projects, one open network.
How it works
- Sign in with your AT Protocol handle. Bluesky, Blacksky, North Sky, or your own PDS. No new account, no phone number.
- Build your buddy list and organize people into trust tiers. See who's online, set your status.
- Call anyone with one click. Free, encrypted, cross-platform. Send IMs when you can't hop on video. For offline DMs, we link out to Germ.
Trust model
We're upfront about how your data flows.
- Video and voice are encrypted: all calls use DTLS-SRTP. Even when relayed, the TURN server forwards encrypted packets without decrypting them.
- Trust-aware routing: your inner circle gets pure P2P connections (STUN). Everyone else goes through our TURN relay to keep your IP hidden. No third-party STUN servers. All self-hosted.
- IMs are peer-to-peer: instant messages travel device-to-device via WebRTC data channels. Nothing stored on the server.
- DMs via Germ: for persistent private messages, proto IM links out to Germ, a separate service with MLS end-to-end encryption. We don't operate Germ and never see your DMs.
- Buddy list tiers: Everyone, Community, Inner Circle. Each tier controls presence visibility and whether connections are P2P or relayed.
- Public data: your buddy list and public messages are ATProto records in your repo, visible on the network. You own them.
- No analytics, no cookies, no tracking: this site and the app collect zero behavioral data.
Built for community
A safe space, especially for those who need it most.
proto IM exists to be a safe space for all people. We will aggressively ban and moderate any form of hate speech, threatening, and stalking. That's not a footnote. It's the foundation.
Block/report, room bans, account age gates, slow mode, allowlists. ATProto labeler integration respects your existing moderation preferences. Trust tiers control presence visibility and P2P routing. Relay-by-default protects IP addresses for anyone outside your inner circle. Your buddy list is the discovery mechanism, not the algorithm. Available in 16 languages with self-hosted translation, more coming.