chatto-cli

chatto rooms
chatto messages general
chatto send general "hello world"
chatto watch

Command-line client for Chatto, a self-hosted team chat platform. Browse rooms, read and send messages, and stream live events from the terminal. Talks to the Chatto ConnectRPC API and the realtime protobuf WebSocket.

Install

go install github.com/teal-bauer/chatto-cli@latest

Or build from source:

git clone https://github.com/teal-bauer/chatto-cli
cd chatto-cli
go build -o chatto .

go install produces a binary named chatto-cli. The examples below use chatto; rename or alias it.

Quick start

chatto login                    # authenticate, save a profile
chatto rooms                    # list rooms on the server
chatto messages general         # recent messages in #general
chatto send general "hello"     # post a message
chatto watch                    # stream live events (Ctrl+C to stop)

Rooms are matched by ID, name, or #name.

Commands

Command	Description
login [profile]	Authenticate and store a token
logout [profile]	Remove a stored profile
profiles	List saved profiles
me	Show the current user
rooms [--all]	List joined rooms, or all visible rooms with --all
join <room>	Join a room
leave <room>	Leave a room
messages <room>	Show recent messages
send <room> <text…>	Send a message
watch	Stream live events from the server
repl	Interactive shell

messages flags

• -n N / --limit N: number of messages to fetch (default 20)
• --before <cursor> / --after <cursor>: page through history using the opaque cursors printed by a previous page

watch flags

• --room <id|name>: filter events to one room
• --history N: show the last N messages from --room before streaming (ignored with --json)

Global flags

• --json: machine-readable JSON output
• --debug: print the raw protobuf JSON alongside rendered output
• --profile <name>: use a specific config profile
• --instance <url>: override the instance URL

Interactive shell (repl)

chatto repl
chatto > use general
chatto:#general > messages 30
chatto:#general > send hello from the repl
chatto:#general > watch
chatto:#general > unwatch
chatto:#general > exit

use <room> sets the current room. Room names with spaces can be quoted: use "off topic".

Configuration

Profiles live in ~/.config/chatto/config.toml:

default_profile = "default"

[profiles.default]
instance = "https://chat.example.com"
token    = "..."
login    = "you"

chatto login --profile work adds a second profile. The token is a bearer credential; keep it out of shared configs. --instance, CHATTO_INSTANCE, and CHATTO_TOKEN override the stored profile.

Output

Messages render in an IRC-like format:

[20:15] [#general] <Alice> hey everyone
[20:16] [#general] [Thread "hey everyone"] <Bob> welcome back
         ↩ Alice: "hey everyone"

Reply and thread context is fetched on demand and cached. Video attachments render with their processed URL once transcoding finishes.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later