Documentation
Everything you need to run your own instance — starting from no prior experience, ending at production.
The four guides
Installing
From a bare machine to a working chat network. Both install paths — Docker, or plain systemd services in an LXC — plus the four ways people can reach you.
Running it
The eight commands you'll actually use. Backups that restore, updates that don't break, and what to do when something is red.
How it works
Why a server is a Matrix Space, why the browser never talks to Matrix, where your data physically sits, and what's deliberately absent.
Security & privacy
What's protected, what isn't, which ports listen where, and an honest account of the encryption story.
Start here
If you have a spare computer and ten minutes, that's the whole prerequisite list. No domain name, no Cloudflare account, no credit card, nothing to sign up for.
git clone https://github.com/Formicaria/SOVRGNnet.cc.git sovrgnnet
cd sovrgnnet
./install.shIn the repository
These live alongside the code, so they change when it does.
| Document | What it covers |
|---|---|
| QUICKSTART.md | Setup assuming no prior experience, including what to do when it goes wrong |
| docs/LXC.md | Native install with no Docker — Proxmox LXC or bare Debian/Ubuntu |
| docs/DEPLOYMENT.md | Production hosting: DNS, TLS, Matrix well-known delegation, backups |
| docs/ARCHITECTURE.md | How the pieces fit together, in engineering detail |
| docs/PROTOCOL.md | The SOVRGN protocol: versioning, capabilities, discovery, and how to check another implementation |
| docs/BACKUP.md | Backups, verification, and moving an instance to another machine |
| docs/THREAT_MODEL.md | Threats, mitigations, and residual risk — written against what is built, not what is planned |
| docs/ROADMAP.md | What's done, what's next, and what was deliberately deferred |
| CHANGELOG.md | What shipped, when |
Where things stand
v0.6.0 alpha. Working today: accounts, communities, channels, text chat over a real Matrix homeserver, file sharing on your own IPFS node, invite links, roles and moderation, message editing, reactions, typing indicators. Channels are end-to-end encrypted by default where the deployment supports it. A native desktop client connects to several independent instances at once. Backups are portable, verified before restore, and can be encrypted at rest. A Prometheus-compatible metrics endpoint watches the whole stack.
Not yet: voice and video, mobile apps, federation between instances, an instance directory, and session revocation — sessions are stateless and last a year. Metadata is never encrypted, even in encrypted channels, and there has been no independent security audit. See security for what that means in practice.
Getting help
Bugs and questions go to
GitHub issues.
A failing install is a bug in the installer, not a mistake you made —
include what sovrgnnet status and sovrgnnet logs
say and it's usually diagnosable from that alone.