XtermChat | A Terminal Chat App With a Built-in Server Monitoring Bot

A few months ago I got tired of giving my team's conversations to third-party servers. So I built XtermChat — a self-hosted chat system that runs entirely in the terminal. Since then, it has grown into something I didn't originally plan: a full client-server chat system with a terminal TUI, a web admin panel, and a bot that monitors your VPS and sends alerts directly into your chat rooms. This post is about what it became. What XtermChat Is Now At its core, XtermChat is still simple: a Python Flask server, a SQLite database, and a CLI client. But it now ships with three ways to use it. 1. Terminal TUI — the original interface. Run xtc start:chat @general and you get a full terminal UI with three panels, dual-focus mode, emoji shortcuts, link detection, and clipboard copy. 2. Web Admin Panel — run xtc start:web and open localhost:5000 . Full admin panel with dashboard, room management, chat with link previews (OG image, title, description), and bot management. 3. Bot System — run xtc st