I Built a Chat App in 30 Minutes — Text, Voice, and Video Calls Included

#webdev #javascript #programming #ai

For years, I treated “building a chat app” like a mountain you climb only with a full team and a lot of patience.

Messaging. Contacts. Conversation history. Profiles. Voice calls. Video calls. Real-time UI states. Responsiveness. Edge cases. The list goes on.

So I did what most people do: I kept the idea in my head and told myself, maybe someday.

Then I tried SeaVerse.

And in about 30 minutes, I had a working AI Chat web app that actually feels like a product — not a mockup, not a slide, not a “concept UI.”
It can chat, it can do voice calls, and it can do video calls. Smooth layout, clean controls, real app energy.

Here’s the live demo and the Fork link if you want to improve it further:

🎮 Demo: https://seaverse.ai/apps/meta/share.html?r=0jyLIvXfbJm

🔱 Fork (build on top of it): https://seaverse.ai/apps/meta/builder.html?fork=8vBKVCdIsfWVHDv5kdvd

It’s not a “demo.” It’s a product-shaped first version.

My personal test is simple:

If someone lands on it, can they use it without needing a tutorial?

This one passes.

On the left: a familiar contacts list, search, avatars, unread indicators, online status.
In the middle: the conversation itself — bubbles, timestamps, an input box, send action.
On the right: a profile panel that makes the other person feel… present. Not just text on a screen.

And then there’s the part that surprised me the most:

This isn’t “chat only.”
It jumps into voice and video call flows that look like what people expect — connection status, call timer, clear controls for microphone/speaker/camera.

If you’ve built communication UI before, you know how many little things have to be “just right” for it to feel natural. That’s what made this experience so satisfying.

Why this matters more than “I built a chat app”

Because the point isn’t the chat app.

The point is what happens when turning ideas into working software becomes easy enough to do on a regular afternoon.

Most people don’t lack ideas.
They lack the ability to cross the painful gap between “I want to build this” and “It runs.”

That gap used to require:

a team

a long schedule

heavy technical execution

lots of trial and error before you even had something to show

With SeaVerse, the gap feels dramatically smaller.
It’s less like construction, more like shaping: you start with a working structure, then refine it into something real.

And once you’ve experienced that speed, it changes the way you think.

You stop asking, “Can I build it?”
You start asking, “Is it worth building — and who is it for?”

How I’d improve this next (Fork-ready roadmap)

If you open the Fork link, here are the upgrades that turn a great prototype into something people can depend on:

1) Make messaging feel truly “real-time”

persistent message history (no losing state on refresh)
read receipts / delivered states / typing indicators
multi-device sync

2) Make voice/video feel stable and trustworthy

better permission prompts and failure fallbacks
graceful behavior under weak networks
call logs and contact-level analytics

3) Make the “companion” aspect feel alive (if that’s your direction)

If you’re building an emotional companion / virtual friend product:

persona cards (tone, preferences, boundaries)
memory that grows over time
richer profiles and avatar customization

4) Make it grow

onboarding + invite flows
share cards, landing pages, SEO structure
retention metrics (conversation depth, call conversion, repeat sessions)

Can you build with SeaVerse and start a business?

You joked: “Does this mean I can use SeaVerse to start a company and become the richest person on Earth?”

That line is funny — but it points at a real shift:

When building becomes fast and accessible, the true bottleneck moves to:

choosing the right problem
finding a real audience
distributing your product
iterating with discipline SeaVerse doesn’t magically solve those things for you. But it does solve something incredibly hard:

*it gets you to a working product, fast — and lets you keep moving.
*
And that’s often the difference between “a dream” and “a business.”