README
Chitchatter
Logo provided by @ramyashreeshetty
Chitchatter is a free (as in both price and freedom) communication tool. Designed to be the simplest way to connect with others privately and securely, it is:
- Fully open source (licensed under GPL v2)
- Peer-to-peer
- Whenever possible, otherwise a TURN server is used to ensure reliable peer connection
- End-to-end encrypted (via WebRTC)
- Ephemeral
- Message content is never persisted to disk on either the client or server
- Decentralized
- No API server required. Chitchatter works completely without an API server - all that's required for basic functionality is availability of GitHub for static assets, and public WebTorrent and TURN relay servers for establishing peer-to-peer communication. An optional API server is available to provide enhanced connectivity features, but users can always choose to use Chitchatter without it.
- Embeddable
- Self-hostable
Chitchatter uses Vite. The secure networking and streaming magic would not be possible without Trystero. File transfer functionality is powered by secure-file-transfer.
Status
How to use it
Open https://chitchatter.im/ and join a room to start chatting with anyone else who is in the room. By default, room names are random UUIDs that are generated client-side. To privately communicate with someone, it is recommended to join one of these randomly-generated rooms and share the URL (via the "🔗" button at the top of the page) to whomever you wish to communicate with via a secure medium of your choosing (such as Burner Note or Yopass). Your user name will be presented to you, and it would be good to share that with who you will be chatting with beforehand so they know they're talking to you.
No API server required: Chitchatter works completely without any API server or backend infrastructure. All communication happens directly between your browser and other users' browsers. While an optional API server is available for enhanced connectivity features, you can always use Chitchatter without it.