antirez/smallchat resource

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

7504 stars · 843 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

A minimal ~200-line C chat server written by antirez as a teaching example for his 'Writing System Software' video series. It demonstrates single-process socket multiplexing and fan-out messaging, working with telnet or netcat clients.

Use cases

• learn how to write a minimal chat server in C
• study socket multiplexing in a single process
• understand how IRC-like fan-out messaging works
• follow along with systems programming video tutorials
• practice reading and refactoring small C codebases
• see how a server can work with telnet or netcat clients

When to choose

• you want to learn systems programming and socket handling from a tiny real example
• you enjoy antirez's Writing System Software video series and want the accompanying code
• you want a minimal codebase to read, modify, or extend as an exercise

When to avoid

• you need a production-ready chat server with authentication, persistence, or security
• you want a project that accepts feature contributions or has a license for reuse
• you need TLS, proper line buffering, or robust error handling

Facets

learning-resource · maturity maintenance

http-server concurrency networking developer-tools education networking c cli chat-server educational systems-programming minimal-example socket-programming video-series real-time linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="antirez/smallchat")