DEV Community: Saurabh Kumar

I shipped v7. Nobody showed up. Here's my honest breakdown.

Saurabh Kumar — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 04:41:00 +0000

I shipped FireChat v7 last week.

Real AES-256-GCM encryption. Messages that disappear when everyone leaves. View-once media that actually deletes from storage. Push notifications that work across devices. Song sharing. A PWA that installs on your phone. Seven rewrites worth of lessons baked in.

And still. Nobody showed up.

7 views in 7 days.

That's not low traction. That's digital silence.

So I stopped blaming "marketing"

Nobody owes me users. Not because I built something. Not because I spent six months on it. Not because I think it's genuinely good.

People only care about one thing — why should I use this instead of everything else?

And honestly? I never answered that loudly enough.

FireChat exists because my friend's sister kept reading our WhatsApp chats. I wanted a place where conversations are locked behind a passphrase, encrypted on your device, and gone the moment everyone leaves. No history. No logs. Nothing to scroll through on someone else's unlocked phone.

That's a real reason. I just never led with it.

What FireChat actually is

Sessions are ephemeral — everything disappears when the last person leaves
Messages are AES-256-GCM encrypted client-side before touching any server
Sessions lock behind an identifier passphrase — even if someone gets the invite link, they're not getting in without the key
View-once images and videos — tap to view once, then it's gone
Push notifications when you get invited, even with the app closed
Installable PWA — lives on your home screen like a native app
Every user gets a public profile page with their vibe and their song

This isn't a weekend clone. This is six months of real decisions about encryption, ephemerality, and what it means to build something that actually respects the people using it.

My brutally honest guesses for why nobody's here

Zero distribution. I have no audience. I built and shipped into the void.
It looks like "just another chat app" from the outside. The differentiation isn't visible until you're inside.
The people who need it most don't know it exists.
I've been building. I haven't been telling the story.

What I'm actually asking

Try it. Break it. Tell me why you wouldn't use it. Tell me what would make you actually open it over WhatsApp or Discord or Signal.

No "nice project bro." Real feedback only.

fyrechatz.vercel.app

Building is the easy part. Getting people to care is the whole game. And I'm just figuring that out.

FireChat v7 is here — and it's been a long time coming

Saurabh Kumar — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:54:43 +0000

Some projects you maintain. Some projects you live inside.

FireChat has been the second kind. For the past six months I've been rebuilding it from the ground up — not because v5 was broken, but because I kept imagining what it could be if I just started fresh with everything I'd learned from building it the first time.

v7 is that version. And I'm really glad you're here to see it.

A little context if you're new

FireChat is a chat app built around one idea: conversations should be able to disappear. You create a session, invite your people, talk — and when everyone leaves, it's gone. No history. No logs. No data that outlives the moment.

It started as something I built for a friend group. Somehow it found real users. That changed things.

What's new in v7

Real encryption. This was the thing I most wanted to get right. Messages are now encrypted with AES-256-GCM on your device before they touch the server. The key lives in your browser. I can't read your messages. Nobody can. v5 had this on the roadmap — v7 ships it.

Media that actually disappears. Images and videos now have a view-once mode. They show up as a locked card in the chat — tap it, the media opens, and that's your one chance. When a session ends, everything gets deleted from storage too. Not archived. Gone.

Song sharing. This one makes me happy every time I use it. Pick any track from iTunes and drop it into the conversation — album art, artist name, and a 30-second preview that plays right in the bubble. Music is such a natural part of how people connect and it felt wrong that it wasn't part of FireChat.

Push notifications. Someone invites you to a session while your phone is in your pocket — you'll know. It took an embarrassingly long time to get this right across multiple devices and browser tabs but it works beautifully now.

Your own profile page. Every user now has a public card at /u/yourusername. It shows your display name, your vibe note, your song. It's a small thing but it's a way to exist in FireChat even outside of a session. Go check yours.

It installs on your phone. FireChat is a proper PWA now. Add it to your home screen. It feels like a native app.

The part where I get honest

v5 worked. People used it. But there were corners of the codebase I avoided opening because I knew what I'd find in there. Auth had a redirect loop I'd been quietly patching. The message grouping was approximately right. Encryption was a comment in a TODO file.

v7 is the version where I went back and fixed all of it properly. It took longer than I expected and I learned more than I planned to. That's the best kind of project.

One more thing I'll be upfront about — a significant portion of v7 was built with AI assistance. Claude wrote a lot of the code. What that meant in practice was that I spent less time typing and more time thinking — about architecture, about edge cases, about whether the thing I was asking for was actually the right thing to build. The hard parts were still hard. Debugging a double push notification across three devices is debugging a double push notification across three devices regardless of who wrote the initial implementation.
I think being cagey about that in 2026 would be a little silly.

I'd love for you to give it a try. Create a session, invite a friend, share a song. See what it feels like when the conversation knows it's temporary.

fyrechatz.vercel.app

And if you want to find me — fyrechatz.vercel.app/u/iam_fragrance.

[Boost]

Saurabh Kumar — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:41:09 +0000

Something BIG is coming to Firechat 🔥

Saurabh Kumar ・ Feb 16

#webdev #chatapp #nextjs #announcement

Tell me something a fluent Pythonista doesn’t know 🐍

Saurabh Kumar — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 05:43:20 +0000

I’ve been working with Python for quite a while now and feel pretty fluent with it —

but let’s be honest… Python always has something up its sleeve 😄

So tell me 👇

A Python feature that surprised you
A weird quirk you discovered way too late
A clean trick you wish you’d known earlier
A “wait… Python can do that?” moment

No beginner stuff please 🫡

I’m genuinely curious to see what even experienced Pythonistas miss sometimes.

Drop your underrated Python knowledge below 🔥🐍

It’s been a week since I shared my chat app — and I’m trying to understand why it didn’t click

Saurabh Kumar — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:13:57 +0000

It’s been almost 7 days since I shared Firechat, a small chat app I built, and it hasn’t really gone anywhere.

Not ranting. Not upset. Just genuinely trying to understand why.

I originally built Firechat for my friends so we could chat privately without keeping message history. Over time, it slowly became a proper app, so I decided to share it publicly and see if others found it useful too.

Maybe the idea isn’t clear.

Maybe the UI isn’t interesting enough.

Maybe people just don’t need another chat app.

Or maybe I’m just bad at presenting it.

Here’s the app if you want to take a look:

👉 https://fyrechatz.vercel.app

And the source code is here:

👉 https://github.com/bug-free-dev/firechat

If you’ve built side projects before, I’d really appreciate honest feedback — even blunt feedback. “This already exists” or “I wouldn’t use this” is still helpful.

If you have thoughts, ideas, or suggestions on what could be better (or why this didn’t click at all), I’m all ears.

Thanks for reading 🙏

Still building. Still learning. 🔥

Tryyyy out Firechat!!

Saurabh Kumar — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:34:40 +0000

🔥 Firechat

Chat. Chill. Vanish. Repeat. 💨✨

🚀 Try the Live Demo

Connect with friends, talk freely, and watch your messages disappear like they never existed.

😄 Why Firechat Exists (True Story)

So here’s the lore.

I just wanted to chat peacefully with my bro.

But… his sister kept peeping into our chats.

And me being a highly introverted, slightly isolated kid, confrontation was NOT an option 😅

So instead of arguing, blocking, or crying internally, I did the most reasonable thing:

I built my own chat app.

That’s how Firechat was born 🔥

A place where messages disappear when the session ends —

no screenshots, no history, no “remember when you said that” trauma.

Simple problem. Slightly overkill solution. Totally worth it.

🌟 What is Firechat?

Firechat is a lightweight, real-time chat app made for:

students
friends
late-night talks
secret convos
and people who just want peace 😌

Messages vanish automatically when you leave.

No clutter. No noise. Just vibes.

Built originally just for fun…

then somehow turned into a full project I kept polishing because I got attached 🫶

✨ Features (aka cool stuff)

💬 Real-time chat (talk, not wait)
🔥 Ephemeral messages – messages disappear when the session ends
🎨 Clean & fun UI – minimal, smooth, and distraction-free
🎓 Made for students – by a student, for students
🙌 Kudos system – appreciate your friends with virtual rewards
⚡ Fast & lightweight – no unnecessary drama

🔐 Privacy First. Student Safe.

Firechat is private by design.

It’s made for students, by a student — so privacy actually matters here.

No permanent chat history
No awkward “wait… did I delete that?” moments
No stress if you accidentally forget to clear chats

Messages automatically disappear when the session ends.

So even if you forget to clear chats… Firechat already did it for you 😌💨

Basically:

Oops-proof chatting for students.

🧠 How it was built (without the boring part)

This project taught me a lot.

I explored ideas, tried things, broke stuff, fixed it again, and slowly shaped Firechat into what it is today.

Some tools helped along the way (you know… the smart kind 😉), but every decision, polish, and late-night tweak was hands-on learning.

It’s not perfect.

But it’s real.

And it works 🔥

🤝 Want to Help Build It?

Firechat is open source, and help is ALWAYS welcome 🙏

👉 Source Code:

https://github.com/bug-free-dev/firechat

You can help by:

🖼️ Adding media sharing (images, GIFs, attachments)
🎨 Improving UI / animations
⚡ Making things faster & smoother
🐛 Fixing bugs or cleaning code
💡 Suggesting fun ideas

Even small contributions matter a lot — PRs, issues, suggestions, anything 💜

(Also… I’m a bit busy these days, so help = instant good karma 😎

God might notice. No guarantees though.)

🔮 Future Ideas (aka “when motivation hits”)

🎨 Custom chat themes
📸 Image & media sharing
🔔 Notifications
🎮 Mini-games inside chat
✨ Even more playful UI

💜 Who is this for?

Firechat started as a student-to-student thing.

A safe, simple, and fun space to talk freely.

Now it’s for anyone who:

likes clean apps
enjoys building
or just wants messages to vanish dramatically 💨

🌱 A Small Request

If you:

tried the app
liked the idea
or laughed at the backstory

Consider ⭐ starring the repo or contributing something small.

It genuinely helps more than you think.

And if you don’t — no pressure 😄

Firechat will still vanish your messages either way.

🔥 Built for students

💬 Built for privacy

💨 Built to disappear

Ready to try it?

👉 Launch the Live Demo

Made with 💜, curiosity, and way too much caffeine

by a student who just wanted privacy.