The complete picture

Everything Station Chat
actually does.

One page, every feature — how the messaging works, how the mesh keeps your clinic or office talking when a PC or the internet goes down, how mobile and identity fit together, and exactly what's protected and how.

Messaging Mesh Mobile Identity Push Security Admin Diagnostics Reliability Roadmap
Start here

The six things
worth knowing first.

Private, local-first messaging

Your conversation history is stored on your own network, not a third-party cloud.

Resilient mesh architecture

No single office PC has to carry the whole conversation on its own.

Full mobile Station Chat

iPhone and Android access, installed straight from a QR code — no app store.

Real background notifications

Stay notified after leaving the chat screen, not just while it's open.

Stable Mobile + Local Backup

A recommended everyday connection, and a direct-LAN alternative when you need it.

One identity everywhere

Restore the same identity — and the same private conversations — across Stable and Local.

Messaging & communication

Everything your team
already expects from chat.

Group chat

One shared space for the whole office or clinic network.

Private messages

Dedicated one-to-one conversations, separate from the group.

Replies

Reply to a specific message, quoted in context.

Reactions

Emoji reactions on any message.

@Mentions

Tag a specific person, with its own alert treatment.

Message search

Find previous messages and information quickly.

Voice messages

Record and send voice notes directly in a conversation.

Photos & files

Share images and documents with inline previews.

Online & away presence

See who's currently available at a glance.

Clear unread indicators

Unread conversations stand out, organized by day as you scroll back.

Station identification

See which station or device a message actually came from.

History synchronization

Conversation history stays in sync as stations reconnect.

Your own private mesh

No single PC runs
your whole conversation.

Authorized Station Chat PCs find each other automatically across your local network and form a mesh — group history is replicated between them, so one PC is never a single point of failure.

Automatic LAN discovery

Stations find one another on the network without manual setup.

Distributed history

Group conversation history is maintained across every station in the mesh.

No single-PC dependency

If one station goes offline, the others keep communicating.

Internet-independent core chat

Local messaging continues even when your internet connection is down.

Mesh reconnection

Stations rediscover each other automatically after a network change.

New-station review

A newly discovered station is flagged for an administrator to review before it's trusted.

Full mobile experience

Scan once.
Take Station Chat with you.

A real installable app for iPhone and Android — no App Store submission required. Group chat, private messages, voice, files, replies, reactions and mentions all work exactly like the desktop app.

Stable when connected. Local when you need it.

Stable Mobile is the recommended everyday connection — it can securely relocate your paired station even after its network address changes. Station Chat Local connects directly over the LAN and keeps working without internet, as long as the local network itself is up. Most people never need to think about which one they're using — Stable Mobile just works, and Local is there as a fallback.

Installable PWA

Add it to your home screen straight from the browser — no app store deployment.

QR-code pairing

Scan a code to connect — no accounts to create.

Mac & browser access

Works from any modern browser, not just phones.

Relay-based address lookup

Stable Mobile finds your station's current network address automatically.

Verified, not blind trust

The address the relay returns is cryptographically checked, never just assumed correct.

Automatic reconnect

Handles a station's local IP changing without any manual re-pairing.

More than two PWAs

One person.
One identity. Two ways to connect.

A saved Station Chat identity can be restored into both Stable Mobile and Station Chat Local — the same name, the same cryptographic credentials, and access to the private-message history tied to that identity. Switching connection methods never turns you into a second, different person in the conversation.

Backup & restore

Back up once, restore whenever you need to — a new phone, a reinstalled PWA, or setting up both Stable and Local.

Identity belongs to you

Not tied to a temporary browser session — it's yours to carry forward.

Private history follows you

Restoring your identity restores access to the private conversations tied to it.

Persistent device identity

Cryptographic identity survives normal restarts — no re-verifying every time.

Challenge-response verification

A returning device proves possession of its identity, not just a claimed name.

Corrupted storage handling

Detects and recovers cleanly if identity storage is ever damaged.

Real push notifications

Notifications that
don't stop at the browser.

Station Chat keeps notifying staff after they've left the chat screen — including while the installed app isn't actively open.

Background notifications

Arrive even when the app is backgrounded or closed.

Private-message alerts

Notified the moment someone sends you a direct message.

Group notifications

Stay in the loop on the shared conversation too.

Smart @mention alerts

Being tagged gets its own distinct treatment.

Mesh-aware delivery

A message from another station still reaches your phone correctly.

Admin-controlled retention

Configure how long an away device keeps receiving push alerts.

For transparency: notification preview text currently passes through our push delivery service on its way to your phone, the same way standard web push works for most apps. Core chat and your stored conversation history are entirely separate from this and are never exposed to it. Recipient-side encryption of push previews specifically is in active development — see what's next.

Security you can verify,
not just a padlock icon.

Local-first by design

Group conversations and stored history remain on your clinic or office network. External services are used only for specific features that require them: push delivery, locating a station after its network address changes, initial license activation and software updates. Core chat and communication between stations continue locally without internet.

Encrypted at rest

Stored messages and files are encrypted at rest, not just in transit.

Optional end-to-end encrypted DMs

Turn on encryption for a private conversation and the content is genuinely unreadable to any intermediary station or server — not just hidden in the interface.

Safety-code verification

Protected private conversations can be verified out-of-band, not just trusted by default.

Verified Stable Mobile connection

Cryptographically checks the station it connects to, rather than blindly trusting the relay.

Device revocation

Block a device and cut off its access, including notifications, at any time.

Protected station-to-station trust

A conflicting identity key is rejected rather than silently trusted — a mesh peer can't quietly impersonate another station.

Powerful controls
without an IT department.

Device access

Ban and re-admit devices as needed.

Station access

Decide which stations accept new users and which participate in the mesh.

New-station review

A newly discovered station waits for administrator review before it's trusted.

Push retention

Configure how long an away device continues receiving push notifications.

Branding

Your organization's name and logo, shown across every device.

Connection health

See connection status across the mesh at a glance.

When you need to know why

Built to be
diagnosed, not guessed at.

Real diagnostic information, exportable when you need support — enough separation between LAN, Stable Mobile and push to tell you exactly which layer had a problem.

Human-readable status

Plain-language connection information, not just raw logs.

Exportable diagnostics

Export a full diagnostic log for support, filterable by date.

Mesh connection details

See peer-dialing results between stations directly.

Identity-conflict logging

A rejected, conflicting identity key is logged with enough detail to investigate.

Push-delivery visibility

See exactly why a notification did or didn't arrive.

Layer-separated failures

Know whether an issue is your LAN, Stable Mobile, or the push service — not just "something's wrong."

Designed to keep working

Different failures,
different — smaller — consequences.

Nothing is designed to take the whole system down at once. Here's what actually happens when something goes wrong.

Internet goes down
Core LAN chat continues normally.
One station PC goes offline
The other mesh stations keep communicating.
A station's IP address changes
Stable Mobile locates its paired station again automatically.
Your phone is backgrounded
Push notifications can still arrive.
You switch between Stable and Local
Your identity — and your private conversations — come with you.
Your phone is replaced
Restore your saved identity onto the new device.
A device should lose access
An administrator revokes it directly.
The public push service is unavailable
Core chat and stored conversations are unaffected — only background alerts pause.
In development

What's next:
encrypted push previews.

The one remaining gap between "the push service can technically see a notification preview in transit" and true end-to-end privacy for every part of Station Chat. The design is already worked out — recipient-side encryption using a separate encryption identity from your signing identity, so the push service only ever sees ciphertext, never your message. We'll update this page the moment it ships.

Ready to see it
running on your own network?

Download Station Chat