How to collaborate within VS Code.
I wanted to share with you my favorite productivity tool for VS Code, weirdly enough it’s not an extension, it’s a CLI messenger that you are able to utilize from within the Terminal view. Take a look:
Psssst, it support markdown! Here is the cheat sheet:
- *bold* -> bold text
- _italic_ -> italic text
- ~strikethrough~ -> strikethrough text
- `code snippet` -> `a + b // no *markdown* here`
- !1 text! -> red text (1–6: red, green, blue, yellow, cyan, magenta)
- #secret# -> #secret text# (can be copy-pasted)
Cool! What else can we do?
Well… rather a lot! We can send files, create groups, message people’s phones, all whilst staying private and behind multiple layers of state of the art encryption. Here is an example of a file send:
How do I install?
Linux & macOS:
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat/master/install.sh | bash
Windows
Follow instructions here: https://github.com/simplex-chat/simplex-chat
What is the full list of features?
- 1-to-1 chat with multiple people in the same terminal window.
- Group messaging.
- Sending files to contacts and groups.
- User contact addresses — establish connections via multiple-use contact links.
- Messages persisted in a local SQLite database.
- Auto-populated recipient name — just type your messages to reply to the sender once the connection is established.
- Demo SMP servers available and pre-configured in the app — or you can deploy your own server.
- No global identity or any names visible to the server(s), ensuring full privacy of your contacts and conversations.
- Two layers of E2E encryption (double-ratchet for duplex connections, using X3DH key agreement with ephemeral Curve448 keys, and NaCl crypto_box for SMP queues, using Curve25519 keys) and out-of-band passing of recipient keys (see How to use SimpleX chat).
- Message integrity validation (via including the digests of the previous messages).
- Authentication of each command/message by SMP servers with automatically generated Ed448 keys.
- TLS 1.3 transport encryption.
- Additional encryption of messages from SMP server to recipient to reduce traffic correlation.
Is this available as an app?
Yeah! It is. Apps are available for both iOS and Android though they are relatively early in the development cycle. Check out this website here for the links: https://simplex.chat/
