Jelly is a tiny social network that lives entirely in your terminal.

No feeds full of ads, no tracking; just people hanging out over SSH, posting messages, tagging stuff, and leaving notes on each other’s profiles like it’s 2006 again.

This repo is the public home for Jelly:

• What it is
• How to connect
• FAQ / status
• Screenshots & updates

Imagine:

• You open your terminal
• You ssh into a weird neon BBS
• There’s a global feed, some trending tags, cozy ASCII avatars, and
• A handful of strangers chatting like they just found a secret room on the internet

That’s the vibe.

"if you discover it, you can join." If you can get into an SSH server, you’re in.

Linux / macOS:

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "jelly"

Windows (PowerShell):

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "jelly"

Accept the defaults and don’t lose your key. Jelly uses it as your identity.

ssh jellyssh.xyz

• Auth: SSH public key only - no passwords, no web signup form
• Your identity is mapped from your SSH public key fingerprint
• First join: you get a guest-style username (e.g. guest_1234), which you can rename with /nick

If your terminal supports decent UTF‑8 and 256‑color/truecolor, you should be fine. (If something looks cursed, try another terminal and let me know in #feedback.)

• Post messages into a live-updating global timeline
• Scroll back through recent posts

• Use tags like #tui, #feedback, #gaming, etc.
• Switch views by selecting a tag in the sidebar
• When you’re in a tag view, Jelly auto‑appends that tag to your post if you forget
• Feels like lightweight rooms without heavy channel management

• Every profile has a guestbook

• /sign message on someone’s profile to leave a note

• Recent signatures show up on their page

• /status text – set a short status line under your name

• Profile themes with different animated backgrounds (matrix, snow, inferno, etc.)

• Edit your avatar in a built‑in ASCII editor
• Small size + printable characters only so it renders correctly in lots of terminals

• /top8 NAME – add someone to your Top 8
• /rmtop8 NAME – remove them
• Shows on your profile (myspace throwback)

From the main feed:

/help           Show commands
/global / /home Jump back to GLOBAL_FEED
/view NAME      Open another user’s profile
/top8 NAME      Add to Top 8
/rmtop8 NAME    Remove from Top 8
/quit, /exit    Leave Jelly
Ctrl+C          Also leaves Jelly (classic)

On profiles:

/sign message   Sign someone’s guestbook
(Your profile)  Typing plain text updates your status
U               Edit your PFP (when viewing your own profile)
Esc             Back to feed

Jelly is built to feel like a retro BBS running on a modern stack:

• Language: Go
• Terminal UI: Bubble Tea + Lip Gloss
• SSH server: Wish
• Auth: SSH public keys only
• Rate limiting: Simple per‑IP sliding window so reconnect spam doesn’t melt the box

• ✅ Public SSH server
• ✅ People actively hanging out and testing
• ✅ Feels surprisingly cozy already
• 🚧 Features & UX still changing a lot

No promises, but things I’d like to explore:

• Better help / onboarding flow for new users
• Soft moderation tools (mutes / filters) that don’t kill the chill vibe
• Optional per‑user notes / "mini blogs" on profiles
• Exportable data / backups

If you’ve tried Jelly and something broke (or was just weird), you can:

• Open an issue on this repo
• Or hop into Jelly and drop a note in #feedback

Screenshots, terminal info (kitty, iTerm2, Windows Terminal, etc.), and OS details really help when debugging rendering issues.

Right now Jelly is just one person paying for a small box on the internet because it makes me happy.

If you want to support it:

• Show up and hang out
• Tell other terminal‑obsessed friends
• Star this repo so it looks a little less lonely

I may add a donation link (Ko‑fi / Buy Me a Coffee / etc.) here later once things settle down.

Jelly is built and hosted by a single human who likes:

• terminals
• and the idea that not everything online has to feel like a growth‑hacked product

If that resonates with you, you’re exactly who I built this for.

If you made it this far, you probably already know how to find the server.