Introduction

group-terminal is a minimalistic, terminal-based group chat system designed for testing and prototyping AI service integrations. Most group chat systems require authentication, databases, and user management before you can test a single message handler or prototype collaboration of user groups with AI. group-terminal eliminates this complexity by providing a minimal WebSocket-based chat server and Rich-powered terminal clients that let you focus on testing your integration logic rather than infrastructure setup.

The project delivers four capabilities to accelerate development workflows. A zero-configuration design means no authentication or database setup is required. Server-side message handlers let you build and test services that respond to group chat messages. The Rich-based terminal interface provides immediate visual feedback with configurable colors for different message types. Finally, the explicit testing-focused design ensures you spend time building features rather than maintaining production concerns like security or persistence.

[!NOTE] group-terminal uses termios for terminal control and is Unix-specific. It will not work on Windows systems.

Documentation

• User Guide: Overview and getting started guide
• API Documentation: Complete API reference

LLM-Readable Documentation

For AI assistants and LLM-based tools, optimized documentation formats are available:

• llms.txt: Concise documentation suitable for LLM context windows
• llms-full.txt: Complete documentation with full API details

Development

For development setup, see DEVELOPMENT.md