EntchenChat Help

Welcome to EntchenChat - a real-time chat application with persistent history, search, and themes.

Getting Started

Enter your name in the username field
Type messages in the input box at the bottom
Press Enter or click Send to send your message
Use Shift+Enter for new lines in your message

Keyboard Shortcuts

Ctrl+F / Cmd+F: Focus search
Ctrl+K / Cmd+K: Focus message input
Ctrl+E / Cmd+E: Open export menu
Ctrl+Enter / Cmd+Enter: Send message
Enter: Send message
Shift+Enter: New line in message
↑: Edit your last message (empty composer, within 15 minutes)
End: Jump to latest messages
Ctrl+J / Cmd+J: Toggle light/dark theme
Shift+? or Ctrl+/: Show shortcuts dialog
Esc: Close dialogs/dropdowns

Slash Commands

/me <text> — send an italic action line (e.g. /me waves → waves)
/shrug — appends ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to your message
/tableflip — appends (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
/unflip — appends ┬─┬ ノ( ゜-゜ノ)

Features

Real-time messaging: Messages appear instantly for all connected users
Persistent history: Chat history is saved and restored
Search: Search through message history (Ctrl+F), with author and date filters:

from:alice — only messages from authors whose name starts with "alice" (case-insensitive, up to 3 from: tokens, ANDed)
after:2026-10-19 / before:2026-10-19 — keep only messages after/before a date (UTC)
Time of day supported: after:2026-10-19 14:30 or after:2026-10-19T14:30
Relative ages: after:3d, before:12h, after:30m (days / hours / minutes ago)
Repeated tokens of the same kind add up instead of replacing each other: after:2026-09-01 after:2026-10-01 starts at the later bound, and a second before: moves the end to the earlier one — an extra filter can only narrow the result
Combine freely: deploy from:eric after:3d. Unknown tokens stay plain text — a typo never breaks the search.

Themes: Light/dark theme toggle (Ctrl+J)
System prompts: Different AI assistant modes
File upload: Share images in chat
Export/Import: Backup and restore chat history (an import caps at 500 messages and keeps the newest ones; entries with empty text are reported as skipped)
Read receipts: See when others have read your messages
Reactions: React to messages with emojis
Pinned messages: Important messages can be pinned

API Endpoints

GET /api/health - Health check (live SQLite round-trip)

GET /api/messages - Get recent messages (supports ?before=, ?around=, ?latest=, ?chat_id=)

GET /api/messages/:id/edit-history - Revision chain of an edited message (optional ?chat_id=; an id outside that chat answers 404, exactly like a missing one)

GET /api/users - Distinct authors for @-autocomplete (optional ?chat_id=; an unknown chat is an empty list, never the global one)

GET /api/system-prompts - Get available system prompts

GET /api/pins - Get pinned messages (optional ?chat_id=, capped at 100; X-Pins-Truncated says when older pins were left out)

GET /api/search?q=term - Search messages; supports from: and after:/before: filters

GET /api/export?format=json - Export chat history (also md, txt); limit=0 exports everything up to the 10 000-row cap, since/until take ISO-8601 and reject junk with a 400, user matches an exact author name up to 30 characters

POST /api/import - Import chat history (max 500 messages per request; the newest entries win when a file is larger, unstorable entries are reported in skipped, and reply quotes are re-linked to the restored messages)

POST /api/upload - Upload an image (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP — max 5 MB)

Development

For developers interested in contributing or running their own instance:

Built with Node.js, Express, Socket.io, and SQLite
Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3
PWA support for mobile installation
Responsive design for all screen sizes

Happy chatting! 🦆