fermi.chat, the README, Harmony docs, and the Discord-alternatives blog make a stack of promises: a real community, a finished client, a license story, a moral story. The files contradict each one.
Open Graph on fermi.chat. Button copy: “Join today!”
Found: the maintainer’s own state-of-the-project post:
“the main instance lacks users, so people don't want to join due to the lack of users.”
The official screenshot is Mathium05 talking to one person who is doing “nothing.”
instances.json displays a single Harmony instance. Spacebar is still in the file with
"display": false.
README: “Fermi is a Harmony Client written in TS, HTML, and CSS.” Harmony: Discord backend re-implementation, fully compatible.
Found: Harmony cannot talk to Discord users. The docs say so in bold.
You cannot use a Harmony server to chat with your friends on discord.com.
The client clones Discord chrome (member list, guild rail, GIF picker, bot tags) and keeps
Discord’s public_flags catalog in Dbadges.ts: HypeSquad houses,
Nitro premium, guild booster levels 1 through 9, quest_completed.
Support is a discord.com guild. Theme color on the homepage: #4b458c.
README: “AI code due to not being GPLv3 compatable is not allowed in this repo… And to be clear, any use of AI is not allowed in Fermi.”
Found: LICENSE is GNU Affero GPL v3.
package.json license field was GPL-3.0AGPL-3.0.
On September 24, 2026,
commit 23c1e5c
(“apparently this was wrong”) changed the npm string from the ordinary GPL to the Affero
GPL. AGPL-3.0 is still a
deprecated SPDX identifier.
Current GNU identifiers are
AGPL-3.0-only
or
AGPL-3.0-or-later.
Translatewiki lists AGPL v3. The word in the README is “compatable.” Harmony’s contributing
guide bans AI-assisted work too, which is a wider net than the GCC “legally significant LLM
output” policy they are borrowing the vibe of.
GPL and AGPL are two licenses. The FSF forbids relicensing one as the other. AGPL section 13 is the network copyleft a hosted client at fermi.chat actually triggers. Fermi’s own LICENSE “How to Apply” text is the or-later grant. The npm field still hides that choice. The AI ban is still written as a GPLv3 problem.
README · LICENSE · package.json (live) · package.json before the fix · commit 23c1e5c · SPDX AGPL-3.0 (deprecated) · AGPL-3.0-or-later · FSF: don’t say “GPL 2” · npm license field · Translating:Fermi
April 2026 Harmony announcement: “I'm not working alone, I'm working with many talented individuals… I hope we as a group of people can lead this project.”
Found, same person’s code of conduct: “I'm just one person and I want to work on this project, not community management… this is up to my (mathium05) sole discretion.” GitHub bio: “the main dev of Fermi Client.” 19 followers. The weekly Reddit posts are signed by one account.
The Future of These Projects · CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md · MathMan05
“Harmony is the continuation of Spacebar without all of the structural problems and with much higher standards for code quality and review.”
Found: Harmony is a Spacebar/Fosscord fork. The COPYING file still dates to the
fosscord-server commit from 2021. Fermi disables ESLint
(eslint.config.cjs.hidden, commit message “disable eslint”). Homepage JS leaves
console.log(mobile) and console.warn(json) in the landing page.
Duplicate HTML ids (box4title twice). i18n key welcomeJank. Typo
function warnOffiline.
Weekly Reddit: “Fermi is getting ever closer to being complete.” Homepage: Join today.
Found in their own feature chart and blog: friend requests pending, push notifications no, video chats pending, live streams pending, components and interactions no, embed creation no. Logging out was a weekly-update headline in August 2025. Long messages used to crash the scroller. SECURITY.md: “there are no stable releases.” Android client is still an open GitHub issue.
Homepage: “even just pointing out some typos.”
Found, on the same page and in the same files:
requestion, dirrectly, compatable, wether, warnOffiline, ISO 8166-2, welcomeJank.
Duplicate id="box4title". The old Jank README said the AI rule “didn’t need to
be said, but it doesn’t.” They later changed “doesn’t” to “does.”
Harmony launch post: goals include “finishing the reporting API, e2ee communications, modals, along with finishing interactions and components.”
Found: those are listed as plans after a fork. The live client still has interactions at missing. E2EE is a sentence on a blog. Melody Chat’s marketing site is four lines and a Codeberg button. The “serious alternative” still tells you to ask questions on discord.com.