What Is Cabal (cabal.chat)?

Cabal is a chat platform for friends and communities that works offline, is private and peer-to-peer, and is run by volunteers without owners. It is a fit if you want group chat that keeps working when the internet drops, and you are willing to download a client rather than sign up on a hosted service. It is not a fit if you need a managed cloud product with a company behind it.

What Cabal actually is

The project describes itself in three claims: it works offline, it is private and peer-to-peer, and it is built by volunteers with no owners. Those three points drive most of the practical differences from mainstream chat apps.

• Offline-capable. Chat is not dependent on a central server being reachable for you to read and write.
• Peer-to-peer. Participants connect to each other rather than to one company's servers.
• No owners. There is no company account to create, no subscription tier, and no vendor deciding what the platform does next.
• Download required. The site offers a download rather than a browser sign-up flow.

How it differs from typical chat platforms

The trade-off is visible in the project's own updates. In its 2025 end-of-year post, the team wrote that they had "been quiet as a project" because they are "regular people volunteering behind the project," and that life "has a way of making itself known in various ways, causing periods of downtime and rest in the project." If you need predictable release cadence and support, that is a real cost. If you value a platform that is not owned by anyone, it is the point.

What the ecosystem looks like

Cabal is not just one app. The protocol has been implemented independently, which matters if you care about the project outliving any single client.

• A standalone Erlang implementation. A friend of the project, Cryptix, built the Cable protocol in Erlang, including a node implementation and an early TUI (terminal user interface) client, published at https://git.sr.ht/~cryptix/caberl/.
• A redesigned website. A new site was designed with a team starting from an offer in 2022 and implemented in 2025. It is not yet live on the main domain, but a preview is hosted at https://cabal.codeberg.page/. The design contributors credited are A. V. Bridgwood, Freya Morgan, and Eileen Wagner.
• A content/template split. The old site was HTML that was "somewhat fragile to update." The new approach separates content (Markdown) from templates, and deliberately avoids requiring visitors to enable JavaScript so the site works in terminal browsers and for security-minded readers.

The Erlang work is the more consequential item: it shows the protocol can be implemented in different language ecosystems, not only the original one.

How to decide

Choose Cabal if:

• You want group chat for friends or a community that keeps working without a connection.
• You prefer peer-to-peer and private over centralized hosting.
• You are comfortable downloading and running a client.
• You accept volunteer-paced development, including quiet stretches.

Look elsewhere if:

• You need a hosted service with no installation.
• You need commercial support, SLAs, or a roadmap you can hold someone to.
• You want to sign up in a browser in under a minute.

Getting started

1. Go to cabal.chat and use the download link on the page.
2. Install and launch the client.
3. Join or create a community space for your group.
4. Verify offline behavior yourself: disconnect from the network and confirm you can still read and write in the space, then reconnect and confirm messages sync with the other participants.

The last step is the one worth doing before you commit a group to it, because offline and peer-to-peer behavior depends on the other participants being reachable at some point.

Open questions

The available project material does not state pricing, account requirements, or platform support for the download. Treat those as unconfirmed and check the download page directly rather than assuming the client is free or available on your platform.