termchat

A terminal chat app in Rust. One server relays messages to many TUI clients over plain TCP. No accounts, no setup beyond cargo.

Cleartext by design. Messages travel unencrypted on the wire. Don't use it for anything sensitive — it's a learning project, not a privacy tool.

What it looks like

┌──────────────────────────────┐┌──────────────┐
│ alice: hey, anyone here?     ││ alice        │
│ bob: yo                      ││ bob          │
│ SYSTEM: carol joined the chat││ carol        │
│ carol: hi!                   ││              │
│                              ││              │
│                              ││              │
└──────────────────────────────┘└──────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Input as [you] _             │
└──────────────────────────────┘

The left pane is the chat history. The right pane is the list of currently connected users. The bottom is the input box. Esc to quit.

Requirements

• Rust toolchain (1.85+ required; project uses edition = "2024")
• A terminal that supports ANSI escape sequences (basically anything modern)

No cmake, no OpenSSL, no system libraries — all dependencies are pure Rust and pulled in by cargo.

Build

From the repo root:

cargo build --release

The two binaries land at ./target/release/server and ./target/release/client.

Run

Open two terminals (or more) from the repo root.

Terminal 1 — start the server:

./target/release/server
# → Chat server listening on 0.0.0.0:8080

Terminal 2 (and 3, 4, …) — start a client:

./target/release/client
# Enter your username: alice

Type a message and press Enter to send. Every connected client sees it. New joiners and leavers are announced as SYSTEM: ….

Controls

Key	Action
Any character	Append to input
Backspace	Delete last character
Enter	Send the current input (ignored if empty)
Esc	Disconnect and quit

The client's username is chosen once at startup. To chat as a different name, restart the client.

What the server does

• Listens on 0.0.0.0:8080.
• Accepts any number of clients concurrently.
• Forwards every chat message to every other connected client.
• Maintains a live user list and broadcasts it on every join and leave.
• Logs connections, disconnections, and codec errors to stderr.

The server has no admin commands, no message history, no persistence — restart it and the chat is empty.

How messages flow

client A ──► server ──► client B
              │
              └──────► client C
              │
              └──────► client D

All clients see all messages. There are no private channels, no DMs, no rooms.

Troubleshooting

Address already in use (server) Port 8080 is taken. Either stop the other process, or change the bind address in src/bin/server.rs:31 and the connect target in src/bin/client.rs:42 to match.

Client disconnects immediately The server isn't running, or it's bound only to a different interface. Check the server log.

Garbled output in the TUI Make sure your terminal supports ANSI escapes. Inside tmux or screen, the app works as long as the parent terminal does. Resize the terminal to redraw.

Panic in the client leaves the terminal in raw mode The client installs a panic hook that restores the terminal before printing the error, so this shouldn't happen. If it does, run stty sane or open a new shell.

Limitations

• No encryption, no authentication, no rate limiting — anyone who can reach the port can read and write.
• No message history; late joiners don't see prior messages.
• No protocol versioning; client and server must be the same build.
• Username SYSTEM is reserved by the server for join/leave notices. Picking it will collide visually with system messages.
• Hard-coded port and address; no config file, no flags.

License

Released under the MIT License.