Transient Chat

Everything is ephemeral.

Transient.chat is a lightweight, in-memory chat platform designed for real-time, impermanent conversation.

There are no profiles. No feeds. No likes.
Just temporary rooms, simple handles, message expiration, and live synced watchrooms.

About

All messages automatically disappear after 1 hour
Empty rooms are purged — nothing is saved
Users are identified by transient handles, released when inactive
No databases, no disk writes, no persistence of any kind
Watchrooms allow embedded synced YouTube viewing and conversation
Works without WebSockets using traditional HTTP polling

This project is a throwback to early internet chatrooms — lightweight, anonymous, and inherently temporary.

Perfect for those who miss casual chat with no expectations or archives.

Features

Regional and topical chatroom lists
Synchronized YouTube playback in "watchparty" mode
Ephemeral message and session design
Audio indicators and user join/leave sounds
Owner moderation (kick users from rooms)
Admin panel for IP/username bans
Admin routes protected by environment-based Basic Auth
No database dependency (runs entirely in volatile memory)

Deployment

This app is intended to be deployed on DigitalOcean App Platform
as a Python Flask application.

You should:

Point DigitalOcean to this repo
Specify Python as the runtime
Set environment variables for your admin login:

ADMIN_USERNAME=your_admin_name
ADMIN_PASSWORD=your_secure_password

Project Structure

transient.chat/
├── app.py             # Flask app factory and launcher
├── config.py          # Loads environment variables
├── models/
│   ├── state.py       # In-memory shared state
│   └── cleanup.py     # Background cleanup thread
├── blueprints/        # Modular route definitions
│   ├── auth.py
│   ├── chat.py
│   ├── rooms.py
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── watchparty.py
│   └── static_routes.py
├── static/
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── chat.html
│   ├── watchparty_chat.html
│   ├── server_list.html
│   ├── faq.html
│   ├── admin.html
│   └── assets/        # Frontend resources
│       ├── css/       # Stylesheets
│       │   └── styles.css
│       ├── js/        # JavaScript files
│       │   ├── admin.js
│       │   ├── chat.js
│       │   ├── faq.js
│       │   ├── index.js
│       │   ├── server_list.js
│       │   └── watchparty_chat.js
│       ├── sounds/    # .wav audio clips
│       │   ├── user-in.wav
│       │   ├── user-out.wav
│       │   └── message.wav
│       └── favicon.ico
└── requirements.txt   # Python dependencies

Contributing

Pull requests and issues are welcome.

If you'd like to add features, improve styling, or help build out exportable modules, feel free to fork and contribute to the project.

Nothing is archived.
Nothing is retained.
Everything is ephemeral.

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