Skip to main content

What is Ratspeak?

Ratspeak is a small family of communication tools that run on Reticulum — an encrypted mesh networking stack that does not depend on the public internet. You can use it to message a friend across the room over Bluetooth, across town over a LoRa radio link, or across the world over a TCP tunnel — without an account, without a phone number, and without a server in the middle. The flagship app also ships experimental peer-to-peer voice calls on top of the same Reticulum links.

The umbrella name is Ratspeak. It is also the name of the flagship app. The wider ecosystem includes Rust protocol crates, handheld firmware, turn-based game payloads, avatar tooling, and experimental hardware-identity work. They share Reticulum/LXMF where that makes sense, but not every component is a network endpoint.

Have questions? Check out the frequently asked questions.

Explore the docs​

📄️What is Ratspeak?

Ratspeak is a small family of communication tools that run on Reticulum — an encrypted mesh networking stack that does not depend on the public internet. You can use it to message a friend across the room over Bluetooth, across town over a LoRa radio link, or across the world over a TCP tunnel — without an account, without a phone number, and without a server in the middle. The flagship app also ships experimental peer-to-peer voice calls on top of the same Reticulum links.

What's in the box​

The short version: Ratspeak is the app, Ratdeck and rsCardputer are LoRa handheld firmware projects, rsReticulum and rsLXMF are the Rust protocol stack underneath the desktop/server software, rsLXST is the experimental Rust telephony stack the app uses for voice calls, and smaller projects like LRGP, LXMFace, and Ratkey handle games, identity avatars, and experimental hardware keys.

For the full map, see Ratspeak Ecosystem. The flagship app has its own Ratspeak App product page.

Built on Reticulum​

Reticulum is the network. Ratspeak's private traffic is encrypted end-to-end on top of it. Reticulum has no central servers, no exit nodes, no DNS, and no IP addresses you need to care about. Identities are cryptographic keypairs you control. Packets can travel up to 128 hops, and the same packet format runs over LoRa radios, packet radio (AX.25), TCP, UDP, Bluetooth LE, I2P, and more — mix and match per link. LXMF is the message format that rides on top: it handles direct delivery, Offline Inbox store-and-forward through propagation nodes, attachments, and ticket-based anti-spam.

You do not need to understand any of that to send a message. But it is why Ratspeak works the way it does — and why your conversations keep working when the internet, your ISP, or a particular service does not.

Who it's for​

  • People who want private messaging without trusting a company, providing a phone number, or being reachable through a username someone else issues.
  • Off-grid and field operators who need a way to talk when there is no cell tower and no Wi-Fi — over LoRa, over a wire, over whatever's at hand.
  • Community network builders standing up a neighborhood- or city-scale mesh and looking for a usable client to put in front of it.
  • Tinkerers, ham operators, and developers who want to build on a real protocol stack with a clean Rust implementation and a friendly UI.
  • Travelers and journalists who cross borders and networks where having a phone number tied to your messages is not the threat model you want.

If you are new, the Choosing Your Setup guide will help you pick a starting point. If you have hardware already, jump straight to Install and Platform Setup.

What it is not​

  • Not the regular internet. Ratspeak does not use the web, does not need DNS, and does not work like an ISP-routed app. It runs over its own network. That network can use the internet as a transport — but does not require it.
  • Not a Discord or WhatsApp replacement. There are no servers, no rooms you join with a link, no presence indicators driven by a backend. Conversations are between identities, end-to-end. Group chat works, but the model is different.
  • Not surveillance-friendly. Private message encryption is on by default and is not optional. There is no "company" sitting between two participants — because there is no company in the path at all.
  • Not anonymous by default. Encryption hides the contents of your messages. It does not, on its own, hide that you are on the network or who you are talking to. If anonymity is your threat model, see the FAQ entry on anonymity and read Cryptography & Protection before relying on Ratspeak for it.
  • Not finished. This is an active project with a public roadmap. Things land. Things change. The FAQ is the most honest read on current state versus future plans.

Where to next​