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in progress Solo — Full-Stack · 2023 — Present

ChatTy — Terminal Chat App

A terminal-based, peer-to-peer chat app for Ubuntu & macOS — first hand-built solo before AI coding tools, now re-engineered from scratch in Go with AI-assisted workflows. A deliberate before/after in one project.

  • Go
  • PostgreSQL
  • MQTT
  • SQLite
  • Bubble Tea
  • goreleaser

ChatTy is the project I’m proudest of as a pure engineering exercise — first designed and built entirely by hand, solo, before AI coding tools were part of how I work. Every piece, from the backend to the terminal client to the cross-platform packaging, was reasoned through from first principles. It’s now getting a ground-up rebuild — same architecture, a sharper stack.

What it is

A real-time chat app that runs in the terminal on Ubuntu and macOS. Users register and log in from the command line, exchange a short token, and talk directly with each other — no GUI, no fuss. The backend is deliberately kept out of the message path: it only handles accounts and sets up the chat, so it never sees message content.

The original build (by hand)

  • A signalling backend in Node.js / Express + MongoDB — accounts, JWT auth, and chat provisioning — deliberately kept out of the message path.
  • A peer-to-peer message layer over MQTT — once a chat is established, messages flow directly between the two clients on paired directional topics; the backend only relays the initial request.
  • A Python terminal client — health checks, register / login, token exchange, and a threaded live send/receive loop.
  • Cross-platform packaging — Debian packages, a systemd unit (Linux), and a launchd plist (macOS), with install scripts.

Re-engineering it in Go

Keeping the zero-knowledge, peer-to-peer architecture intact, I’m rebuilding the implementation from scratch on a stack that fits a distributed CLI far better:

  • A Go terminal client — a single static binary (Charm’s Bubble Tea TUI, local SQLite history), cross-compiled to Ubuntu and macOS from one machine. This deletes the old PyInstaller packaging and the Node file-watcher supervisor the Python client relied on.
  • A Go + PostgreSQL signalling backend — one language across client and server with shared domain types, compile-checked SQL via sqlc, and real transactions for token issuance. The data was always relational, so Postgres replaces MongoDB.
  • A private, authenticated, TLS MQTT broker — moved off the public test broker onto a hardened, self-hosted Mosquitto (auth + TLS), deployed with an end-to-end runbook covering the two-firewall and DNS gotchas that make cloud brokers hang.
  • One-command distribution with goreleaser → GitHub Releases + a Homebrew tap, retiring the legacy apt-repo and manual packaging.

What’s next

End-to-end encryption, secrets moved fully into the environment, local chat history and search, and one-line installers. A deliberate before/after: a hand-built foundation, now accelerated with AI-assisted development. Packaged installers will land under Products.