user-to-supporter-chat-rust/README.md

User to Support Chat

Real-time support chat in Rust. Users start conversations, supporters reply from a dashboard. Everything lives in RAM, nothing persists, and it all resets every 20 minutes. Like a café where everyone gets kicked out when the clock strikes. Lovely.

Anonymous by default, ephemeral by design.

What It Does

• Users create sessions anonymously (UUIDs, not usernames)
• Supporters browse active chats and reply in real time
• WebSockets for typing indicators and live message pushes
• Rate limiting: 60 messages per IP per 20-minute window
• Auto-reset: clears all sessions, messages, and rate limits every 20 minutes

Tech Stack

Thing	Choice	Why
Language	Rust 1.96	Single binary. No runtime. Panic = abort.
Framework	Axum	WebSocket support, typed routes, tokio-powered.
State	DashMap	Concurrent, lock-free, perfect for in-memory sessions.
Frontend	HTMX + vanilla JS	Less JavaScript, more HTML swaps. No bundlers.
Deployment	Bare metal + systemd	No Docker. No Podman. Just a binary and a .service file.

Running It

The justfile handles everything, but you'll need to install it on your machine.

just build         # clippy + fmt + release
just run           # dev mode with hot reload
just deploy        # rsync to server + restart systemd
just logs          # tail remote journalctl

Server binds on 0.0.0.0:3111. Landing page at /, user view at /user, supporter dashboard at /supporter.

Key Behaviors

• Sessions are created via POST to /api/session/create — returns JSON with UUID
• Messages sent via HTMX forms to /send/:session_id or /supporter/send/:session_id
• WebSocket connects to /ws/user/:session_id (user) or /ws/supporter/:supporter_id
• Reset countdown shown in navbar, auto-refreshes every second
• Typing indicators broadcast via WebSocket using prefixes like typing:user:start:<session_id>

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For production use, you'd want a database, auth, TLS, and probably less drama.