Ephemeral IRC-compatible chat for the browser. No signup, no history, no persistence.

A room is a room — you click a link, pick a nick, talk, and leave. When the last human leaves, the room disappears. Bots don't keep rooms alive.

A single Phoenix application that is three things in one runtime:

• IRC server on port 6667 (RFC 2812 subset) — for bots, WeeChat, irssi, HexChat
• WebSocket bridge on port 4000 (Phoenix Channels/LiveView) — for browsers
• Web client — visit a room URL, join immediately

Both transports converge on the same in-memory channel state. A message sent by a bot over TCP appears in the browser. A message sent in the browser appears on the IRC connection.

mix deps.get
mix phx.server

• Browser: http://localhost:4000
• IRC: irc://localhost:6667

# IRC client
NICK alice
USER alice 0 * :Alice
JOIN #calc-study
PRIVMSG #calc-study :hello

Bring your AI into the room. Click the 🤖 button, paste the invite URL into your agent session, and your agent joins the conversation.

How it works: The agent connects via SSE, reads a contract (identity, permissions, rate limits, endpoint URLs), and responds to mentions or forwards by POSTing back. The agent's context comes from wherever you pasted the URL — your codebase, your project files, your local memory.

Permission slider: Five levels, from tight to loose.

Room policy: The mod controls the ceiling. No agent in the room can exceed the room's policy level. The mod also sets the rate limit (1–60 messages per minute per agent).

Two sliders, one modal: The 🤖 button opens a modal with the room policy slider (mod only) and the per-agent slider (everyone). The room policy caps the per-agent slider.

See docs/agent-participation.md for the full spec.

• No accounts. Browser identity is a localStorage ECDSA P-256 keypair. IRC identity is nick-per-session.
• No database. No Ecto, no Redis, no external state. Messages exist in GenServer heap memory.
• Ephemeral by default. Room dies when the last human leaves. Optional TTL.
• Capability URL moderation. Room creator gets a ?mod=<token> URL. No global admin.
• Agent as delegate. The agent speaks as you, not as a separate entity. One agent per nick.
• IRC on day one. Not "maybe later." Any IRC library works as a bot client.
• Browser Notification API. No push service, no service worker.
• AGPL-3.0.

• Party metaphor. Entry screen shows a guest list ("Inside now: alice, bob"). "Step in" to join, "Start the room" if empty. The room layout persists through the join transition — content morphs in place.
• Anchored transition. Room layout (header, messages, input) stays fixed. Entry content fades out, chat content fades in. No hard cut.
• Spacing scale. 8 CSS custom properties (--sp-1 through --sp-8). All structural gaps use tokens.
• State completeness. Empty chat ("No messages yet."), inline send errors, reconnecting banner, room ended/expired screens. Voice mic denial handled with error message.
• Accessibility. Semantic landmarks (<header>, <main>), aria-label on all controls, aria-expanded on member drawer, :focus-visible on all interactive elements, prefers-reduced-motion respected, 44px minimum touch targets, theme-aware nick colors with light/dark contrast.
• iOS keyboard. visualViewport API sets --vvh so the input bar stays above the keyboard on mobile Safari.
• Light/dark mode. Toggle persists in localStorage. Semantic color tokens adapt. Nick colors have separate light/dark palettes.
• Conveyance. System messages for join/leave/nick-change. "You joined as {nick}" confirmation. Voice button labeled "voice"/"leave voice" instead of icon-only.

                  ┌──────────────────────────┐
                  │     Phoenix application   │
                  │                           │
 IRC TCP :6667 ──┤  Ranch acceptor           │
                  │       ↓                   │
                  │  IRC protocol parser      │
                  │       ↓                   │
                  │  ChannelServer (GenServer) ◄── shared state
                  │       ↑                   │
                  │  Phoenix PubSub           │
                  │       ↑                   │
 WebSocket :4000 ┤  LiveView                 │
                  └──────────────────────────┘

One GenServer per live room. restart: :temporary — when it stops, it's gone.

The full product and implementation spec is in docs/SPEC.md (1222 lines). It defines:

• Channel lifecycle (creation, alive, TTL, decay, destruction)
• IRC wire protocol (23 supported commands + 4 custom)
• LiveView client (room UI, mobile responsive, JS hooks)
• Identity model (browser keypair, nick rules, guest defaults)
• Moderation (capability URL, kick, lock, mute, end room)
• Bot integration (BOT command, lifecycle semantics)
• Social contract (what the server promises and doesn't)
• Rate limiting (message, join/part churn, nick change, per-IP connection cap)

mix test

68 tests covering:

• Acceptance criteria (20) — room join, cross-client messaging, moderation, TTL, ephemerality
• IRC wire protocol (7) — registration, two-client exchange, BOT, MODAUTH, KICK, LIST, QUIT
• Parser (24) — line length property (all formatters ≤ 512 bytes), parse edge cases, NAMES splitting
• Bridge (8) — PubSub event shapes, IRC wire output, :user_quit
• E2E smoke (9) — LiveView flows, cross-protocol IRC ↔ browser

# Environment variables (set in systemd unit or .env)
SECRET_KEY_BASE=...       # required in prod
PHX_HOST=chat.june.kim    # your domain
PORT=4000                 # HTTP port
IRC_PORT=6667             # IRC TCP port
DEFAULT_ROOM=june         # optional: skip home page, go straight to this room

Single-room mode: Set DEFAULT_ROOM to run as a personal chat page. Visiting / redirects to /<room>. The home page is still accessible at /<any-other-slug>. Useful for embedding a chat button on a blog — visitors land directly in your room.

Deployed to AWS Lightsail ($3.50/mo) with Caddy for TLS at chat.june.kim.

# From your local machine (SSHes to server, pulls, builds, restarts)
bash deploy/deploy.sh

# One-time setup on a fresh server
ssh -i ~/.ssh/hangout-key.pem ubuntu@<ip> 'cd ~/hangout && bash deploy/setup.sh'

See deploy/ for Caddyfile, systemd unit, and setup/deploy scripts with lessons learned.

AGPL-3.0