Gitter

Gitter is a chat platform designed to help developers discuss code and collaborate on software projects. It provides public and private chat rooms that are often organized around GitHub repositories, allowing communities to talk about issues, features, and documentation in real time. Users sign in with their GitHub accounts, and rooms can be linked to specific repositories to surface related discussions.

The platform offers real-time messaging and supports formatting with Markdown for code blocks and other content. It includes features such as file sharing, link embedding, search across rooms, and user mentions. Gitter also supports bots and various integrations to automate notifications, project events, and workflows, along with APIs and widgets for embedding chat into other tools or websites.

Gitter has been used by many open-source projects and developer communities as a lightweight alternative or complement to issue trackers and mailing lists. It serves as a space for onboarding new contributors, discussing design decisions, debugging, and community support, often surfacing conversations that might be dispersed across multiple channels elsewhere.

In the broader landscape of developer collaboration tools, Gitter emphasizes a social, room-based approach to conversation around code. It has historically been integrated with popular development workflows and platforms, enabling developers to connect, share knowledge, and coordinate efforts in a centralized chat environment.