I Built a Chat App That Deletes Itself (Because I Was Bored at 2am)

I'm going to be honest with you.

It started because I watched a spy movie, thought "this message will self-destruct in 5 seconds" was the coolest thing ever, and immediately opened VS Code instead of going to sleep like a normal person.

Seven days, one developer (me, just me, no team, no co-founder, no intern, nobody — just me, my laptop, and an unhealthy amount of coffee), I had Burn Chat running.

Here's what it does: you create a chat room with a countdown timer. Share the link. People join. You talk. When the timer hits zero, every single message on every single screen disappears. The server deletes everything. There's no history, no logs, no exports, no "deleted messages" folder. It's just... gone. Forever.

This is the story of how I built it, what I got completely wrong, and the parts I'm actually proud of.