Can Communities on Holochain be installed for regular use?

The maintainers' own release listing labels a later pre-release "DON'T USE" and the README calls the work a work in progress with limited functionality, so it is not presented here as software for regular use.

What is a DNA in this project?

It is the Holochain package that carries an app's data rules; the README describes the repository as holding the DNAs required for running Communities, built and started with the hc toolchain.

Where is the user interface?

It is not in this repository. The companion repository Holo-Host/holo-communities carries the front end, built from the Hylo codebase with its own separate Holochain build step.

Project · holochain-dna

Communities on Holochain

Name: Communities on Holochain
Author: Holo-Host

building blocks for a community appDNA for the holo communities hApp

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How you run it: not recorded
Holochain version: 0.0.44-alpha3
Activity: stalled
Checked: 27 October 2026

What is Communities on Holochain and what is it for?

Communities on Holochain is the Holochain app layer behind Communities — a set of DNAs holding the rules for the shared data a community's members read and write. It was built as the back end for a community platform, with the visible interface living in a separate repository, and it was exercised through testing releases rather than shipped as a finished product.

Communities on Holochain holds the Holochain components — DNAs — behind Communities, a community platform Holo-Host worked on around 2019. The README describes the repository as holding "DNAs required for running Communities on Holochain" and carries the maintainers' own warning that it was a work in progress with only limited functionality at that stage. A companion repository carried the user interface.

In human terms these DNAs are the shared rules of a group space: the parts that set what a community's members can publish and how that data is held, so a front end can work with it without a central service owning the record. Because the interface lived in a separate repository, this one is not an app a person opens on its own — it is the back end those interfaces were built on.

The project was exercised through Holoscape, the desktop app that installed and ran Holochain apps on a person's own machine: the repository's release listing shows a build published "for testing in Holoscape". That same listing labels it "DON'T USE", and the README frames the work as a limited work in progress, so this is a record of a historical project rather than maintained software. Further detail is in the repository README and its release listing.

How to get it

Desktop app

Install Rust and the Holochain container as described in the Holochain developer documentation the README links to.
Build the DNA package: hc package
Start it: hc run
To try two instances at once for interface testing, start a sim2h server on its default port and launch each instance with the --networked sim2h option pointing at it.
Sourcing note: these steps are quoted from the repository README and describe the hc toolchain of the period when the repository was active; no source read here states that they work with any later Holochain release.

Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Holo-Host/holo-communities-dna/develop/README.md

Questions people ask

Can Communities on Holochain be installed for regular use?: The maintainers' own release listing labels a later pre-release "DON'T USE" and the README calls the work a work in progress with limited functionality, so it is not presented here as software for regular use. source
What is a DNA in this project?: It is the Holochain package that carries an app's data rules; the README describes the repository as holding the DNAs required for running Communities, built and started with the hc toolchain. source
Where is the user interface?: It is not in this repository. The companion repository Holo-Host/holo-communities carries the front end, built from the Hylo codebase with its own separate Holochain build step. source

From 4 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.

Try Communities on Holochain

Code on GitHubOpen on GitHub ↗Last change 17 June 2022.
Releasev0.0.7-prePre-release, published 25 May 2020.
The project's own files do not say how it is run.

Details & sources

Source: Holo-Host/holo-communities-dna

Evidence

Release: github.com/Holo-Host/holo-communities-dna/releases/tag/v0.0.7-preshipped in a release · seen since 20 October 2026 · github.release@1
Last change: api.github.com/repos/Holo-Host/holo-communities-dnalisted by a third party · seen since 20 October 2026 · github.repository@1
Activity: api.github.com/repos/Holo-Host/holo-communities-dnalisted by a third party · seen since 20 October 2026 · liveness@1

Compatibility

hdk: 0.0.44-alpha3 · Cargo.lock @ ff35247
hdi: —
holochain-client: —
happ.yaml: absent
web-happ.yaml: absent

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