Luminous

About This Project

Luminous, named after the Atlas School mascot, Lumi, is an online chat platform exclusively for Atlas School students and alumni. Built primarily with Next.js, Express.js, React, Electron, and Discord.py, it aims to unify the Atlas School alumni community by bridging the gap between the alumni Discord server and the Root community that split off from it in the midst of Discord controversy. Luminous will provide us with our own custom-built chat platform so we have total control and privacy. Its currently experimental cross-application chat bridges messages sent on our Discord server directly to our Luminous app and vice versa, allowing users who don't migrate to Luminous to have seamless communication with users who migrate to Luminous. It's also planned to bridge Root messages as well, but that has not yet been implemented. Once fully implemented, the Luminous bridge will allow seamless real-time communication between all three platforms. The experimental Discord bridge currently works via Discord bot and a webhook. This Discord bot listens to the WebSocket from our Supabase realtime database to provide live messaging in the connected channel(s) from Luminous to Discord. At the same time, the Discord bot listens to Discord messages sent in the connected channels(s) and sends them to Luminous in real time. Luminous is not just a cross-application messaging app, however. It's a private hub for Atlas School alumni and students to communicate and plan events together. All users must sign up with their school email address, and then verify their email. This entirely prevents bot accounts and bad actors. Messages will also be end-to-end encrypted, giving us extra privacy and security. Luminous is available on the web (desktop and mobile) and as an installable desktop app for Windows and Linux. When running the desktop app, much like Discord, the app has the optional ability to minimize to the system tray on close, keeping it running in the background while listening for new messages and sending system notifications when the user is mentioned. A team of volunteer alumni are actively collaborating on this project to make it our own. The project has been ongoing since February, 2026.