Doctrine file · anti-AI
Fermi’s entire public identity, once you get past “Join today!”, is a ban. Not a careful policy about unreviewed dumps. A ban on any use of AI, including assistance, “for legal reasons.” Then they go back to cloning Discord on Node, posting into machine-ranked feeds, and asking GitHub (Microsoft’s Copilot factory) to host the mirror.
The text, as written
AI code due to not being GPLv3 compatable is not allowed in this repo. I thought this didn't need to be said, but it does. And to be clear, any use of AI is not allowed in Fermi. Fermi README.md, GitHub and Codeberg
Keep in mind that we do, under no circumstances, accept AI-generated, AI-assisted, or otherwise machine-generated contributions, for legal reasons. Harmony CONTRIBUTING.MD
No. Just no. It uses AI, and is not currently FOSS, with the most up to date source code being behind a paywall. Mathium05, “What are the Discord Alternatives?”
Fluxer gets no architecture review. The disqualifier is that a computer helped. The rest of the page is a tour of other people’s governance. The author of that tour was banned from Spacebar, in their own telling, for the same argument.
The legal fig leaf
GCC’s 2026 AI policy is about whether LLM output is copyrightable enough to sit inside a copyleft enforcement chain. Fermi’s README pretends that is a GPLv3 problem, then ships three licenses at once.
AGPL and GPL are related. They are not the same document. A policy that says “we ban AI because of GPLv3” while the tree is AGPL and the npm metadata says GPL is not a legal analysis. It is a vibe with a section heading.
Harmony’s contributing file goes further than GCC anyway. GCC still allows
non-significant use. Harmony bans “AI-assisted” and “otherwise machine-generated”
under no circumstances. Spellcheck is machine-generated. Search ranking is
machine-generated. npm install pulls a registry full of code that was
touched by Copilot, Claude, and Cursor in 2026. The rule is unenforceable, which is
why it exists: as identity.
The old Jank Client README said the AI line “didn’t need to be said, but it doesn’t.” They later flipped the last word to “does.” Even the manifesto needed a patch.
The theft lecture, applied to Fermi
Harmony’s README: “We aim to reverse engineer and add additional features to the Discord backend, while remaining completely backwards compatible with existing bots, applications, and clients.” That is the whole pitch. Clone the proprietary API. Keep the bots. Keep the chrome. Call it freedom.
Harmony is Spacebar after a two-week wait. Spacebar is Fosscord with a new name. The COPYING file still remembers 2021. Mathium05’s own post says they were “not a backend dev,” then they took the backend.
Dbadges.ts is Discord’s badge list, including HypeSquad, Nitro, and
booster tiers. Guild rail. Member list. Bot tags. GIF button. Official screenshot
indistinguishable from Discord at a glance. The homepage i18n key is still
welcomeJank.
docs.melodychat.org: “feel free to ask questions in our discord.com guild.” Fermi blog CTAs: “or even the Harmony Discord Server.” A Discord alternative that cannot quit Discord is a costume.
You can dislike generative models. Plenty of people do, for labor, energy, or taste. Fermi’s version is a purity test aimed at other chat apps, written by a project whose existence is “we copied Discord’s homework and then forked the people who copied it first.”
The hardware
This is the boring part, which is why it stings. Fermi is not a hand-carved wooden protocol. It is TypeScript compiled by SWC (a Rust compiler), served by Node, stored on Git forges, translated by Translatewiki, donated to via Liberapay, rendered in Chromium and WebKit, carried over the same transatlantic fiber that carries ChatGPT. The CPUs do not know they have been conscripted into a holy war.
GitHub, the public mirror, is Microsoft. Microsoft ships Copilot into the same UI that shows Fermi’s README. Codeberg restricted LLM content; Fermi moved the canonical repo there, then kept the GitHub mirror anyway, because that is where the stars are (hundreds on GitHub, a handful on Codeberg).
Weekly updates go to Reddit, whose feed is ranked by models. The blog has one-click share to Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky. Those networks are advertising machines with a ranking model in the middle. You do not get to use the loudspeaker and then pretend electricity is a moral failing when someone else uses it to autocomplete a function.
Stack they actually run
Node, npm, SWC, TypeScript, Docker, Nix flakes on Harmony, WebRTC, browsers.
Forums they actually post to
r/selfhosted, r/fermichat, a discord.com guild, Twitter/Facebook/Bluesky buttons.
Hosts they actually use
GitHub, Codeberg, Translatewiki, Liberapay, fermi.chat, blog.fermi.chat.
Rule they actually wrote
“any use of AI is not allowed.”
A coherent anti-AI position would be: we will not accept unreviewed dumps, and we will disclose tools. Fermi wrote a purity oath, then asked the internet’s ranking models to please look at this week’s bundling changelog.
What the ban cost
March 29, 2026: Mathium05 says they were banned from the Spacebar Discord “for arguing against AI use in projects.” Spacebar, in that telling, later claimed other reasons. Two weeks of silence. Then Harmony, named after a community vote Spacebar had already declined. An addendum in June 2026 gloats that an “AI fork” of Fermi went closed source.
That is the doctrine as product management. Disagree about Copilot, lose the Discord, take the git history. Then write 4,000 words about how the old project had “poor management.” Then post weekly in r/selfhosted as if the schism were a feature release.
fermi.exposed