No accounts · No servers after connection · No storage

TERMINAL Encrypted MESSENGER.

Most "secure" messengers still phone home.
DecentChat doesn't. Your keys, your tunnel,
your session — gone when you close it.

GitHub Repo ↗

decentchat@tty — ~/secure

$ decentchat --init

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X25519 key agreement AES-256-GCM sealed box Ed25519 signatures TOFU peer pinning Cloudflare Tunnel direct P2P Zero message storage Terminal native TUI Go single binary Perfect forward secrecy X25519 key agreement AES-256-GCM sealed box Ed25519 signatures TOFU peer pinning Cloudflare Tunnel direct P2P Zero message storage Terminal native TUI Go single binary Perfect forward secrecy

00 // ORIGIN

Why this exists

Built because I didn't trust the alternatives.

I got tired of "private" messaging apps that still need your phone number, still run on someone else's servers, still log connection metadata. Every account is a liability. Every server is a target.

DecentChat started as a weekend experiment — can two machines talk directly, end-to-end encrypted, with no persistent infrastructure? It turned into a full P2P layer. The signaling server touches nothing but session descriptions. After handshake, it's gone from the picture entirely.

"If your identity is tied to a phone number, it's not private."

"Servers should not exist after connection."

"Privacy shouldn't require trust."

01 // HOW IT WORKS

Step by step

No magic. Just four steps.

Discovery

Both peers connect to a stateless signaling server. It exchanges only encrypted session descriptions and ICE candidates. No messages pass through it — ever.

signaling server

Verification

Ed25519 fingerprints are exchanged and pinned (TOFU). If a peer's key ever changes, you get an immediate MITM alert. You trust a key once. After that, it's locked.

Ed25519 · TOFU

Tunnel

X25519 ECDH establishes a shared secret. AES-256-GCM encrypts every frame. Cloudflare Tunnel handles NAT traversal — the signaling server is now out of the loop completely.

X25519 · AES-256-GCM

Communication

Direct P2P. No server involvement. Session keys are ephemeral — each conversation generates new keys. When the session ends, everything is gone. Nothing persists.

perfect forward secrecy

02 // NETWORK TOPOLOGY

Module 02

Hybrid signaling + direct mesh.

The signaling server does one thing: helps two peers find each other. It sees only encrypted session descriptions — no payloads, no identities, no IPs in plaintext.

Once the Cloudflare tunnel is established, the server is completely excluded. It could go offline mid-session and you'd never notice.

TODO: improve NAT traversal reliability on some campus/corporate networks. Edge case exists.

03 // TRADEOFFS

Honest assessment

Good for some things. Not for others.

Good for

Two devs on the same network talking without internet
Journalists exchanging messages without metadata trails
Temporary comms that genuinely disappear after the session
Anyone who can't or won't hand over a phone number
Scripted / automated secure communication pipelines

Not great for

Message history — there isn't any, by design
Non-technical users — CLI-first, no GUI
Unstable network conditions — P2P degrades under packet loss
Account recovery — lose your keypair, lose your identity
Group chats — currently 1:1 only

04 // DEPLOYMENT

Module 04

One command. Any platform.

Keys are generated locally and never leave your machine. No registration step. Run it, and you have an identity.

            PowerShell · Windows
            
          
# Run in PowerShell (as Administrator)
irm https://chat.teamxebec.xyz/install.ps1 | iex

⚡ Downloads the signed binary, verifies the checksum, and adds decentchat to your PATH automatically.

            curl · Linux / macOS
            
          
curl -LO https://github.com/hiwarkhedeprasad/decentchat-terminal/releases/latest/download/decentchat
chmod +x decentchat
sudo mv decentchat /usr/local/bin/
# run: decentchat

            go build · from source
            
          
git clone https://github.com/hiwarkhedeprasad/decentchat-terminal.git
cd decentchat-terminal
go build -o decentchat .
./decentchat