Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Telnet lunatic.chat – A chat server for the terminal
Hi HN, I'm working on an Erlang inspired WebAssembly runtime for the backend[0]. Recently I added TCP support and was looking for apps I could build with it. I ended up building a telnet line chat app. It was a great dogfooding experience and has a nice retro feel to it. You can access the US server with > telnet lunatic.chat or the EU one with: > telnet eu.lunatic.chat You should pick the one closer to you as all the rendering is done on the backend and lower latency will mean better UX. The server is open source[1] and written in Rust. The Rust code is then compiled to WebAssembly and runs…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Telnet lunatic.chat – A chat server for the terminal launched in 2021; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
Lunatic is an Erlang-inspired runtime for WebAssembly - lunatic-solutions/lunatic
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2IM
Run `ssh devzat.hackclub.com` to try it out! The repo is here: https://github.com/quackduck/devzat (golang). It has markdown and emoji support, DMs, channels, and it can show images too. You can send code, and it gets syntax highlighted (you can change the theme). You can ping people like so: @user and it sends them a \a, which should play an audible sound if the terminal allows it. There's inbuilt games and rainbow names and a lot of other small things I don't remember right now. You might find the auth system interesting: it's based on a hash of ssh pubkey (bans use…
2022 · its alternatives →
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RetroTerminal▲152Chat with modern LLMs through a old-school terminal
2025 · iristerminal.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 5
Using threaded emscripten to speed up the generation and offload the main loop. No SIMD or other optimizations. Might work faster with #enable-experimental-webassembly-features enabled. Tested in x86 Chrome and Firefox, Apple Silicon Safari Run it yourself: https://github.com/lxe/ggml/tree/wasm-demo Thanks, https://github.com/ggerganov/ggml,
2023 · lxe.co · its alternatives →
- 6
A point to point color terminal video chat. Contribute to mofarrell/p2pvc development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
- 8CA
Crazierl is an experimental/hobby operating system based around BEAM. I've linked the browser based demo; I don’t recommend using a phone; it does work, slowly, on the phones I tested, but it’s very awkward to use. You can share a link with a hashtag with your friends and click the consent checkbox, and it (should) link up into dist and I’ve also included a chat application you can start with chat:start(). (quit chat with /quit, or use the shell menu with ctrl-g to switch between shells etc). The browser demo relies on the v86 javascript x86 virtual machine. You can also run…
Mar 2026 · crazierl.org · its alternatives →
- 9
Chat'Inn▲69Miminal, Clean and Realtime Global Chat Application
2022 · chat-inn.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 10SC
Hi HN, I wrote a custom SSH server in Go, give it a try. It uses your terminal user and SSH keys to authenticate implicitly. Instead of getting a shell, you get an IRC-style chatroom with everyone else. $ ssh chat.shazow.net If you're getting "Permission denied (publickey)", please use ssh-keygen to create a keypair. Instructions here: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/ SSH is a really cool protocol; it's a lot like HTTP2. This is a demo of one thing you can do with it, but I plan to factor out the code into libraries that will let you build all…
2014 · its alternatives →
- 11
Ably Chat▲73Hey HN, Staff Engineer at Ably here. Over the past few months I've been speaking to engineers building AI assistants, copilots, and agentic workflows (over 40 companies at this point), with particular focus on cloud-hosted agents. I expected the hard problems to be in model selection, prompt engineering, and orchestration. Instead, the same infrastructure challenges kept coming up: realtime sync between agents and end clients is surprisingly painful to get right. - Managing and scaling WebSocket or SSE connections between agents and clients - Buffering messages server-side and implementing…
Apr 2026 · ably.com · its alternatives →
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ssh [email protected] (pass: hn) I did this simple chat with Node.js. It basically consists of a server which listens on a UNIX socket and clients which can connect to it. I changed ttychat's login shell to the chat client (ttychat.js) so that anyone who SSHes into the server automatically joins the chat room. Feel free to fork on Github: https://github.com/olalonde/node-ttychat
2011 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
A simple chat server written in C#. Contribute to Sieep-Coding/simple-chat-csharp development by creating an account on GitHub.
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Hi HN, I built a location-based chatroom with Discord-like servers. This started as a portfolio project to learn WebSockets but has spiraled into something else entirely. There are two features right now: Drop - Single chatrooms that can only be seen within a specified radius and only last for a time less than 48 hours chosen by the user. Hubs - Geofenced servers modeled after Discord. These are not time restricted. They can be created by anyone and the creator becomes the admin able to add channels and set rules. When a user enters the location’s area, they can join the hub and continue…
Nov 2025 · vicinity.social · its alternatives →
- 15
I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic lately, so I decided to build a little web chat app inspired by Yahoo! Messenger. Right now it’s got group chat rooms. Super simple setup, no email required to register. You can create your own room or hop into one that’s already open. Room owners can customize things like backgrounds and even cursors of their room. Users can format their messages with basic markdown like bold, italics, and color texts (kind of like the old Yahoo! days). I even brought back the classic Yahoo! Messenger emoticons because… well, why not? You can try it out here:…
2025 · buzzed.chat · its alternatives →
- 16
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17MC
2017 · chat.concert0x.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Hey HN, what I wanted to build here is a proper universal layer for persisted agentic sessions, that could be seamlessly interacted both via web and a messenger (Telegram). I really like what's done so far and would be nice to hear some feedback from you. The interesting thing is that I started to use Chatcode during its development as soon it was possible, so used this tool to build itself. I know that there could be trust/privacy concerns, because it relies on a gateway that you need to install on your machine in order to work, but: 1. You can use it on any machine, just have some…
Jun 2026 · chatcode.dev · its alternatives →
- 19
This weekend I finally shipped Gryt, a project I’ve been building since 2022 — an open-source, self-hostable Discord-style app focused on reliable voice chat + text. I’m the creator. I started it after getting fed up with Discord disconnects/paywalls and wanted something self-hosted and auditable. I started on this in 2022 and had an early proof-of-concept working back then (auth + friends list), but I quickly realized WebRTC voice isn’t something you can duct-tape together. I spent a big chunk of the next couple years learning the stack (ICE/DTLS-SRTP, NAT traversal, SFU design),…
Feb 2026 · gryt.chat · its alternatives →
- 20
Convos - Better group chat
2013 · convos.by · its alternatives →
- 21OT
It uses WebSockets for real time messaging, so conversations appear instantly as people join and chat. The interface is inspired by a terminal, but there are no commands to learn. Just open it and start talking to people around the world. Update: The deployment issue is fixed. Open Terminal is now fully operational. If you tried it earlier and it wasn't working, it should work now. Thanks to everyone who checked it out.
Aug 2026 · openterminal-sigma.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 22
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23TT
old-unix-style character at a time talk using websockets
2011 · typeto.me · its alternatives →
- 24
Team chat that runs entirely on your own server
Aug 2026 · chatstead.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Lunatic – Actor System for Rust/WebAssembly alternatives
- I made Devzat – It's like Discord but in the terminal, over SSH alternatives
- Lunatic alternatives
- RetroTerminal alternatives
- WasmGPT – “ChatGPT” in the browser, no WebGPU and no server needed alternatives
- A Simple terminal-based video chat – renders in ASCII and has audio alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →