TapPass Chat

TapPass Chat

TapPass Chat is the first-party chat product where every message is governed end-to-end.

Built as a soft fork of LibreChat, with a TapPass overlay layer that routes every LLM call, every tool call, and every MCP call through the governance Pipeline. The SMB wedge — a faster path to "governed AI for our team" than wiring TapPass into a custom agent.

This card describes TapPass Chat as a runtime in the Capability tree. The internal building blocks of TapPass Chat (overlay layout, upstream-sync workflow, hardening contract, branding) are not decomposed here — they live in the tappass-chat repo and, eventually, its own capability tree.

At a glance

What it is	a chat web app with TapPass governance baked in
Built on	LibreChat (soft fork — minimal patches against upstream, periodic merge)
Repo	tappass/tappass-chat (private)
Targets	SMB customers + larger orgs needing a fast governed-chat onramp
Status	next

What governance looks like in TapPass Chat

Every chat message goes through the standard TapPass Pipeline:

   user message
        │
        ▼
   TapPass Chat UI  ──▶  TapPass gateway  ──▶  Pipeline (before steps)
                                                     │
                                                     ▼
                                              LLM provider call
                                                     │
                                                     ▼
                                              Pipeline (after steps)
                                                     │
                                                     ▼
                                              streamed back to UI

Same pipeline. Same audit trail. Same compliance packs. The only thing different is that the agent is the chat UI itself, not a customer's custom code.

Why this concept exists separately from custom integrations

TapPass started as gateway + SDK for customers wiring agents into their own product. TapPass Chat is the opposite shape: TapPass is the product the user touches.

This shape unlocks two things:

1. SMB market access. A team that wants "ChatGPT but governed" doesn't have a custom agent to integrate. TapPass Chat ships them a governed chat in days.
2. Reference implementation. Every governance feature has a working consumer. New pipeline steps, new compliance packs, new audit views are tested in TapPass Chat first.

Soft fork — not a hard fork

The hardening contract:

• Upstream LibreChat is the base. Updates pulled regularly.
• TapPass-specific code is overlay-only. Lives in a tappass/ subdirectory; no edits in upstream files where avoidable.
• Where upstream files must change, the patch is minimal and documented for each merge.
• Branding is overlay (theme, logo, copy).
• License layer lives in the overlay for airgapped deployment.

Soft fork is a deliberate trade-off: we own less code than a hard fork, but we follow upstream's release cadence rather than freezing.

Surfaces

Persona	Surface	What they do
End user	TapPass Chat web UI	Chat with governed LLMs / agents
Org admin	TapPass Admin UI	Configure which models, which compliance packs, which check packs apply
Operator	Audit trail	Every chat message is auditable, same as any other governed call
Auditor	Compliance reports	TapPass Chat sessions show up in standard compliance views

Related concepts

• runs through → Pipeline, Policy engine, Compiled Policy, LLM provider
• emits → Audit trail, Session
• scoped within ↑ Organisation — same multi-tenancy boundary as other agents
• complementary to ↔ custom-agent integrations via the runtime SDK