matrix-axon
Axon
Matrix, with a memory. Axon is a self-hosted personal agent for Matrix that sits between your homeserver(s) and your chat apps, and does the hard parts once, in one place: login, sync, end-to-end encryption, key backup, and full-history search. Your apps stay light, and you never have to start over.
Why try it
- Reinstall without losing anything. Wipe a phone or laptop, sign back in, and your history, search, and read state are already there. Nothing to re-sync, no keys to re-verify, no index to rebuild.
- Search everything you’ve ever said. One full-text index across your whole history, including encrypted rooms and every account you use.
- All your accounts, one place. Personal and work, even on different homeservers, under a single search and a single API.
- Pick up where you left off. Start a message on your phone and finish the same draft in the terminal.
- Threads, edits, and reactions that just work. Axon resolves them on the server, so a late reaction to an old message is never dropped because a client’s timeline window moved on.
- Your data, your hardware. Run it at home or on a small cloud instance; no one else holds your decrypted history.
- Bring your own client. Axon speaks an open, versioned API. We ship a keyboard-driven terminal client, a web client for desktop (Linux/MacOS/Windows) and mobile (iOS/Android), and native apps built from it.
If you’ve ever used an IRC bouncer such as ZNC, the idea will be familiar: Axon is the thing that stays connected, so your clients don’t have to.
See it
- Terminal client demo: threads, inline photos drawn as real terminal graphics, full-text search, and jump-to-date.
- Web client on desktop: spaces, threads, image galleries, and scoped search.
- Web client on mobile: the single-pane layout on an iPhone.
Get Axon
You need a server (the always-on part) and a client. The easiest way to get both on any operating system is the Docker stack:
curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matrix-axon/matrix-axon/refs/heads/main/deploy/docker-compose.beta.yml" -o docker-compose.yml
docker compose up -d
docker compose logs axon-server | grep 'bootstrap is armed' # open the printed URL in your browser
For a native setup:
| Your system | Server | Client |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | brew install matrix-axon/tap/axon-server |
brew install --cask matrix-axon/tap/axon (desktop app), or brew install matrix-axon/tap/axon-tui (terminal) |
| Windows | Docker stack | Desktop installer, or the web client in your browser |
| Linux | .deb or .rpm package (steps) |
Web client in your browser, or the desktop app (.deb, AppImage) or terminal client |
| iOS | — | App Store or TestFlight beta |
| Android | — | APK or Play Store Beta |
Every download is on the latest release page. Installing Axon has full steps for every platform, and building from source is there if you’d rather compile it yourself.
Documentation
| I want to… | Read |
|---|---|
| Install Axon on my machine | Installing Axon |
| Run it with Docker, add TLS or Tailscale, back it up | Docker guide |
| Sign in, add accounts, manage tokens, enable push | Administering the server |
| Look up a config option, environment variable, or limit | Technical reference |
| Use the terminal client | axon-tui |
| Use or develop the web and desktop client | axon-web, desktop app |
| Build from source or contribute | Building, CONTRIBUTING |
| Build my own client | OpenAPI spec, client parity |
| Understand why it works the way it does | Product description, tech spec, ADRs |
The documentation index lists everything else.
Community and help
- Chat: #axon-support:bostoncoop.net for help, #axon-developer:bostoncoop.net for development.
- Questions and ideas: GitHub Discussions. Bugs: GitHub Issues.
- More options, including email, are on the support page.
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