TermChat

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📌 Overview

TermChat is a TCP terminal chat server with accounts, roles, rooms, moderation, and private messages.
Built with TypeScript + Prisma, designed for simple local or Docker-first deployment.

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✨ Features

Feature	Description
Account system	User registration and login with role-based access (USER / MOD / ADMIN)
Roles & permissions	Fine-grained RBAC for moderation and administration
Rooms	Joinable chat rooms with live presence and online user lists
Moderation tools	Slow mode, mute, ban, and role management commands
Private messages	Direct messages with persistent inbox and live delivery
ANSI preferences	Per-user ANSI color support (on/off), persisted in database
Rate limiting	Message rate limits configurable via environment variables
Message limits	Maximum message length enforced (env-configurable)
Message timestamps	Timestamps included in chat and inbox messages
Terminal UX	ANSI-colored output with safe control character handling
Persistence layer	PostgreSQL with Prisma ORM and schema migrations
Docker-first	Fully containerized setup with Docker Compose

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🧰 Tech Stack

Component	Tech
Runtime	Node.js 20
Language	TypeScript
Database	PostgreSQL 16
ORM	Prisma
Deployment	Docker & Docker Compose

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⚙️ Commands

Commands are grouped by category and discoverable via /help inside the chat.

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🗒️ Notes

• If ANSI looks broken in some terminals, use /ansi off.
• For Windows clients, prefer a UTF-8 capable terminal client.

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🔐 Security Notes

This project uses raw TCP and does not provide transport-level encryption. For real-world usage, it should be deployed behind:

• an SSH tunnel
• a TLS proxy (e.g. Caddy / Nginx stream)
• or a private network/VPN

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Clone repository

git clone https://github.com/cresterienvogel/node-termchat.git
cd node-termchat

2. Create .env

cp .env.example .env

3. Run with Docker

docker compose up --build

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🔌 Connection

To verify the mapped port:

docker compose port termchat 5000

To connect:

nc 127.0.0.1 55000