A terminal-based chat application built in Go. Share a chat room with friends over your Tailscale network - they connect via netcat or telnet, no client installation needed.

• Tailscale Integration - Share your chat server securely with anyone on your Tailnet
• Zero Client Setup - Users connect with just nc or telnet
• Colorful UI - Each user gets a unique color, styled messages with ANSI colors
• Message History - New users can see recent chat history (optional)
• Chat Commands - /who, /me, /help, /quit
• Rate Limiting - Built-in protection against spam

# Build
make build

# Run locally
./chat-server

# Run with Tailscale (share with your network)
export TS_AUTHKEY=tskey-auth-xxxxx
./chat-server --tailscale --hostname mychat --history

Connect from any machine:

nc mychat.your-tailnet.ts.net 2323

git clone https://github.com/bscott/chat-tails.git
cd chat-tails
make build

# Build
docker build -t chat-tails .

# Run locally
docker run -p 2323:2323 chat-tails

# Run with Tailscale
docker run -e TS_AUTHKEY=tskey-auth-xxxxx chat-tails --tailscale --hostname mychat

1. Get an auth key from Tailscale Admin Console
2. Set the environment variable:

   export TS_AUTHKEY=tskey-auth-xxxxx

3. Run with Tailscale enabled:

   ./chat-server --tailscale --hostname mychat

4. Share with others on your Tailnet - they connect with:

   nc mychat.your-tailnet.ts.net 2323

If you see "Authkey is set; but state is NoState":

# Option 1: Force new login
export TSNET_FORCE_LOGIN=1

# Option 2: Clear existing state
rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/tsnet-chat-server/  # macOS
rm -rf ~/.local/share/tsnet-chat-server/                  # Linux

# Build
make build

# Run tests
make test

# Run a single test
go test -v -run TestName ./internal/chat/

# Cross-compile for all platforms
make build-all

├── cmd/chat-tails/    # Application entry point
├── internal/
│   ├── chat/          # Room and client handling
│   ├── server/        # Server lifecycle, Tailscale integration
│   └── ui/            # Terminal styling (lipgloss)
└── Makefile

MIT