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