Keel

The backend for Holt Chat, a self-hostable, end-to-end encrypted chat platform.

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Keel is a FastAPI app backed by SQLite. It can serve the Shore frontend directly, or run headless behind your own reverse proxy.

Features

Messaging	End-to-end encrypted DMs and group channels (RSA + AES-GCM); unencrypted broadcast channels also supported
Channels	Members, roles/permissions, bans, pins, interactions
Bots	Token auth and a full bot API, see holt-sdk for client libraries
Integrations	Webhooks and OAuth (SSO) apps, so users can register apps that log in through Holt
Calls	WebRTC (mesh topology), configurable STUN/TURN
Realtime	Server-Sent Events stream, presence, typing indicators
Notifications	Web Push

Running it

Docker (recommended)

docker compose up -d

This starts Keel plus an nginx sidecar. Edit config.toml first, in particular server.port, frontend.frontend_directory, and anything under [instance] / [calls].

Directly

pip install -r requirements.txt
python main.py

Add --dev for a dev environment. Default settings live in default_config.toml (don't edit it, it's overwritten on update); your instance's actual config is config.toml, generated on first run.

Configuration

All server settings are in config.toml. Notable sections:

• [frontend] points frontend_directory at a checkout of Shore to have Keel serve it, or set hosted=false to run the API standalone
• [instance] optional signup password, auto-invite channel, and creation/deletion locks
• [calls] enable/disable calls, participant cap, STUN/TURN servers
• [max_members], [max_file_size], [messages] instance limits

CLI

cli.py provides basic admin commands (list users, delete a channel/user):

python cli.py list-users
python cli.py delete-channel <channel_id>
python cli.py delete-user <username>

Under Docker: docker compose run --rm keel python cli.py list-users.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.md.