DecentraChat

DecentraChat is a serverless, peer-to-peer chat application that uses PGP encryption over LAN multicast. There is no central server: peers discover each other on the local network and exchange end-to-end encrypted, cryptographically signed messages. It is designed for privacy-conscious users, air-gapped networks, and settings like conferences or events where participants share a local network.

Prerequisites

• Rust stable toolchain — install via rustup.rs

Build

cargo build

Test

RUST_MIN_STACK=16777216 cargo test

Quickstart

Start by checking the effective configuration and initializing the local SQLite store:

cargo run -- status

Use --config when you want an isolated node profile:

cargo run -- --config ./config.toml status

For a complete loopback walkthrough with two local identities, trusted contacts, peer onboarding, bounded chat sessions, delivery state, and conversation history, follow the CLI user guide.

Show the command surface at any time:

cargo run -- --help

Protocol and architecture

The full protocol design — peer discovery, key exchange, message format, acknowledgement, and ordering — is documented in PAPER.md.

The implemented v0.3 conversation read model is documented in docs/CONVERSATION_ENGINE.md.

The implemented CLI workflows are documented in docs/CLI_GUIDE.md.

Contributing

A contributor guide is still in progress. For now, use the build and test commands above.