• the bridge - connect Discord, Guilded, Stoat, and Telegram
• the framework - build your own cross-platform bots

Lightning is a project developing truly powerful cross-platform bots, with the underlying Lightning framework being used for Lightning bridge, which is what runs Bolt, the hosted bridge bot. The goal is to also make the framework itself usable by other developers, to create their own bots, and to make the bridge easy to self-host, while also supporting the principles of:

• Connecting communities: the Lightning bridge connects Discord, Guilded, Stoat, and Telegram, allowing communities to connect, wherever they are
• Extensibility: the Lightning framework uses plugins to make it easy to add new features, while keeping the core simple. The bridge is also designed to be flexible, with options to disable pings, setup subscribe-only channels, and more.
• Ease of use: the Lightning framework is designed to be easy to use, with a simple API, and the bridge is designed to be easy to set up and use, with easy-to-understand documentation.
• Strength: Lightning is built on Go, making it easy to build, run, and configure, all while being performant and reliable.

If you've ever had a community, chances are you talk to them in many places, whether that's Discord, Guilded, Stoat, or Telegram. Over time, you end up with fragmentation as your community grows and changes, with many people using multiple messaging apps. People eventually grow tired of the differences between apps, and switching between them, with things becoming a mess.

You could try to move everyone to one app, but that might alienate people, so what do you do, what options do you have?

Bridging! Everyone can use their favorite app, gets the same messages, and is on the same page. Lightning is an easy to use bridge bot that supports Discord, Guilded, Stoat, and Telegram. To get started, check out the getting started guide, which will walk you through using Bolt, the hosted version of the Lightning bot. If you want to self-host, read the self-hosting guide to get started.

Lightning is a framework for building cross-platform bots, allowing you to make bots that support multiple platforms without having to worry about platform-specific code. The framework is built in Go, making it easy to work with, and is designed to handle things like commands, events, rate-limits, attachments, and more, all while being battle-tested in Bolt, which has handled over half-a-million messages during just the summer of 2025.

The framework consists of the core library, which is platform-agnostic, and plugins, which add support for specific platforms, such as Discord, Guilded, Stoat, and Telegram. The only platform-specific code is in the plugins, making it possible to support new platforms without modifying your bot's core logic.

To see a simple example of how to use the framework, check out the framework: hello world guide, which will walk you through creating a simple bot that responds to messages and commands. For the full documentation, check out the framework documentation.

Lightning is both the open-source framework and bridge bot that are used to run Bolt, the hosted version of the bridge bot. Bolt is a specific instance of the Lightning bridge bot, which is hosted by William Horning and is free to use. You can also self-host your own instance of the Lightning bridge

The Matrix protocol is great, and adding support for it to the Lightning framework would be amazing, but non-trivial. Implementing all the features necessary to make a smooth and reliable experience, on par with other platforms, is something that is being worked on in #98, but isn't complete. MSC4144 is a new proposal which makes things easier for the bridge use-case, but that still needs a lot of other work to happen first. Please feel free to contribute if you'd like!

Lightning, the framework and bridge bot, is licensed under the MIT license. The framework and plugins will always remain under the MIT license, though the bridge bot may have a different license in the future, but will always be free to use. Bolt is also free to use, but is also subject to the terms of service.