zfogg / ascii-chat

💻📸 ascii-chat 🔡💬 Video chat in your terminal 🌐 **ascii-chat.com** - Homepage, installation, and documentation 📚 **API Reference & Man Pages** - Developer API reference and C library documentation Probably the first command line video chat program (let me know if this isn't true). Initial commits _November 20-24, 2013_, with @craigpalermo, at some collegiate hackathon. ascii-chat is a client-server application that operates over TCP/IP. It supports color and audio and crypto and compression and multiple clients and has many little features and options. The client functions by simply printing text and terminal escape codes to your terminal, so it works EVERYWHERE that terminals work: on rxvt-unicode in OpenBox, in a Putty SSH session, in iTerm and Kitty.app on macOS, and theoretically everywhere else terminals run. You just need a webcam. ascii-chat even works in an initial unix login shell. You know, the shell that runs 'startx' and launches your desktop environment so you can open a gui terminal app like Konsole or Kitty or Alacritty in kde or xfce. You don't need a desktop environment at all to video chat with ascii-chat. (\*) 🆕 We support UTF-8 now so it's not just ASCII anymore. However, the name is still ascii-chat. 🆕 Now 3+ simultaneous people can connect and the server will render the clients to each other as a grid, like Google Hangouts and Zoom calls do. See the **Network Protocol** in the man3 pages. 🆕 Audio is now supported - turn on your microphone and start talking! See the **Audio System** in the man3 pages. (TODO: buggy - needs work). Update: works with --file and --url. 🆕 **Media support with smart resolution!** ascii-chat can turn media from files and URLs into ascii art. Use for local files (all FFmpeg-supported formats) or for streaming. For complex streaming sites (YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, etc.), ascii-chat automatically uses yt-dlp to extract playable streams. For direct HTTP streams and media files, FFmpeg handles them natively. You can livestream the result with audio into an ascii-chat call, so you could watch a video with friends and discuss it live, all as ascii art. Pass arbitrary yt-dlp options with if needed (e.g., ) \(\*) Testing needed to verify a decent framerate. Animated Demonstrations ascii-chat v0 from 2013: ascii-chat v0.3.5 in 2025. Here are 3 clients connected to a single server, in a call: Code Coverage Table of Contents • 💻📸 ascii-chat 🔡💬 • Animated Demonstrations • Code Coverage • Table of Contents • Get ascii-chat • Build From Source • Usage • Cryptography • Environment Variables • ascii-chat Internet Protocol (ACIP) • ascii-chat Discovery Service (ACDS) • libasciichat • Open Source • TODO • Notes Get ascii-chat **macOS (Homebrew):** **Arch Linux (AUR):** **All Platforms:** • All downloads: GitHub Releases • Documentation: **ascii-chat.com/man3** — C library API reference and man3 pages • Source installation: follow the Build from source steps Build From Source > 📚 **Complete build guide: Build System Documentation** — CMake presets, configuration options, troubleshooting, and platform-specific details. **Quick start:** For detailed build instructions, configuration options, and troubleshooting, see the **Build System Documentation**. Useful CMake Targets Common development targets (run with ): | Target | Description | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | Build the main executable (default) | | | Build shared library ( / / ) | | | Build static library ( ) | | | Build and run all unit and integration tests | | | Generate man page for | | | Generate shell completions (bash, fish, zsh, powershell) | | | Generate API documentation with Doxygen | | | Generate documentation and open in browser | | | Format all C/C++ code with clang-format | | | Check code formatting without modifying files | | | Run Clang static analyzer with detailed reports | | | Run Clang analyzer and open report in browser | | | Create platform-specific installer packages | | , , , , | Create specific package formats ( on Unix/Linux, on Debian/Ubuntu, on RedHat/Fedora, on macOS, on Windows/all platforms) | Usage and --flags ascii-chat uses a unified binary with four modes: , , , and . **Get help:** **Read the installed manual:** **Or create it from source:** **Or view online:** • ascii-chat.com/man1 • ascii-chat.com/man5 **Shell Completions:** Tab completion is available for Bash, Fish, Zsh, and PowerShell. Completions are auto-generated from the options registry at build time. **If installed via package manager (Homebrew, AUR, etc.):** Completions are already installed in standard directories. You may need to setup your shell's completion path: **If building from source or without a package manager:** Generate completions on-demand: Cryptography See **ascii-chat.com/crypto** for complete cryptography documentation. Environment Variables See **ascii-chat.com/man1/#ENVIRONMENT** for complete environment variable documentation. ascii-chat Internet Protocol (ACIP) • 📡 **User Network Documentation: ascii-chat.com/docs/network** • 📡 **Developer API Reference: Man3 Network Protocol Pages** Philosophy When I started building ascii-chat, no existing protocol fit the requirements for real-time terminal-based video conferencing. HTTP/WebSocket are too heavyweight and browser-focused. RTP/RTSP are designed for traditional video streams, not ASCII frames. VNC/RDP are for desktop sharing, not peer-to-peer. So I designed ACIP. It's a binary protocol over TCP built for low-latency, encrypted, multi-client conference calling in terminals. Protocol Overview ACIP is a binary packet protocol over TCP. It starts with a TCP handshake and capability negotiation, followed by a cryptographic handshake using X25519 Diffie-Hellman key exchang…