I wanted to solve the "metadata problem." Most chat apps, even secure ones, keep logs of who talked to whom. I wanted to build a system where the data literally cannot exist once the session ends.
The Architecture:
Backend: A blind WebSocket relay (Node.js) running in volatile memory.
Database: Redis configured as volatile-lru. Keys are evicted instantly. nothing is written to disk.
Digital Silence: I configured Nginx to pipe access.log and error.log directly to /dev/null at the OS level.
Client-Side: The frontend uses the HTML5 Canvas API to "scrub" images (destroying EXIF/GPS data) before encryption.
It is free to use and donation-supported.
Live Demo: https://backalleychat.com
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