Concord

Concord is a Discord-inspired real-time chat project built as a learning sandbox. The current codebase already includes authentication, protected API routes, channel and server data models, historical message loading, and live message fanout over WebSockets.

This repository is split into a Go backend and a Vue 3 frontend:

• backend/: Fiber API, PostgreSQL persistence via sqlc, Redis-backed refresh tokens, and Redis pub/sub for chat broadcast
• frontend/web/: Vite + Vue 3 + Pinia client for login, channel navigation, and live chat
• postgres/ and redis/: local infrastructure compose files

Current Status

Implemented today:

• User registration and login
• JWT access tokens plus rotating refresh tokens stored in Redis
• Protected /api routes
• Servers and server membership in the backend
• Channels scoped to a server
• Message history via REST
• Real-time message delivery via WebSockets and Redis pub/sub

Still rough or incomplete:

• The current main UI does not fully expose server selection yet
• Some docs and config values were stale before this refresh
• Migrations exist, but this repo does not yet include a single canonical migration runner command

Architecture At A Glance

Backend

Entry point: backend/cmd/api/main.go

Startup flow:

1. Load config from .env and environment variables
2. Connect to PostgreSQL
3. Connect to Redis with retry
4. Register public auth routes
5. Register protected /api routes for servers, channels, messages, and WebSockets

Important packages:

• internal/auth: registration, login, refresh-token rotation
• internal/servers: server creation, membership, and listing
• internal/channels: channel creation and listing
• internal/messages: message history queries
• internal/websocket: live chat connections and Redis pub/sub broadcast
• internal/middleware: auth and CORS
• internal/db: generated sqlc access layer plus migrations

Frontend

Entry point: frontend/web/src/main.js

Important pieces:

• src/components/Login.vue: register/login screen
• src/stores/auth.js: auth token lifecycle
• src/views/ChannelsView.vue: current sidebar for channel listing
• src/views/ChatView.vue: message history + WebSocket chat
• src/router/index.js: route protection

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Go 1.24.x
• Node.js 18+
• Docker and Docker Compose
• PostgreSQL and Redis, either via Docker or your own local services

1. Start infrastructure

From the repo root:

docker compose up -d

That includes the backend compose file, which in turn includes PostgreSQL and Redis.

2. Configure the backend

Create or update backend/.env with the values expected by the code:

SECRET_KEY=change-me
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:root@localhost:5432/concord
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379/0
PORT=3000

3. Apply database migrations

SQL migrations live in backend/internal/db/migrations/.

The project uses golang-migrate for database migrations. Install it first:

go install -tags 'postgres' github.com/golang-migrate/migrate/v4/cmd/migrate@latest

Then apply the migrations:

cd backend
migrate -path internal/db/migrations -database "postgresql://postgres:root@localhost:5432/concord?sslmode=disable" up

Note: Make sure to create the concord database first if it doesn't exist:

PGPASSWORD=root psql -h localhost -U postgres -d postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE concord;"

The backend config loader is fail-soft:

• .env is optional
• real environment variables override .env
• missing values fall back to defaults
• invalid typed values such as a bad PORT fall back to safe defaults

4. Run the backend

cd backend
go mod tidy
go run cmd/api/main.go

You can also use:

make run

5. Run the frontend

Create frontend/web/.env:

VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:3000
VITE_WS_URL=ws://localhost:3000

Then start the client:

cd frontend/web
npm install
npm run dev

Testing

Backend:

cd backend
go test ./...

Frontend:

cd frontend/web
npm install
npm run test:unit
npm run lint

E2E support is scaffolded with Cypress:

cd frontend/web
npm run test:e2e

Generated Code

backend/internal/db/*.sql.go and related model files are generated from:

• backend/internal/db/queries/*.sql
• backend/internal/db/migrations/*.sql
• backend/sqlc.yaml

If you change queries or schemas, regenerate the sqlc output before opening a PR.

Migration Commands

Common migration operations:

# Apply all pending migrations
migrate -path internal/db/migrations -database "postgresql://postgres:root@localhost:5432/concord?sslmode=disable" up

# Rollback the last migration
migrate -path internal/db/migrations -database "postgresql://postgres:root@localhost:5432/concord?sslmode=disable" down 1

# Check current migration version
migrate -path internal/db/migrations -database "postgresql://postgres:root@localhost:5432/concord?sslmode=disable" version

# Create a new migration
migrate create -ext sql -dir internal/db/migrations -seq your_migration_name

Known Caveats

• postgres/docker-compose.yaml creates the default database postgres, while the backend configuration expects concord (you'll need to create this database manually)
• frontend/web/src/views/ChannelsView.vue currently calls /api/channels without server_id, but the backend requires server_id
• frontend/web/src/views/ServerListView.vue appears to be a newer server-aware sidebar, but it is not wired into the main layout yet

These are useful areas to improve if you want to continue productizing the app.

Repo Docs

• AGENTS.md
• CONTRIBUTING.md
• docs/bot_support_plan.md
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md
• docs/product_vision.md
• docs/roadmap.md
• docs/frontend_architecture.md
• docs/frontend_design_direction.md
• docs/implementation_plan.md
• docs/dm_friendship_plan.md