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Abhijay Yadav
Abhijay Yadav

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## Building a Real-Time Collaborative App โ€“ Part 1: Chat Done Right ๐Ÿ’ฌ

Creating a real-time chat system from scratch using WebSockets, Prisma, and PostgreSQL.


I'm building a full-stack collaborative app inspired by tools like Notion and Slack. The vision? Real-time chat, shared documents, and even AI features like summarizing and explaining content.

This is Part 1 of the journey โ€” where I built the chat system that powers real-time communication between users in the same room.


๐Ÿ› ๏ธ Tech Stack

  • Frontend: React + Tailwind CSS
  • Backend: Node.js + Express
  • Database: PostgreSQL (via Neon)
  • ORM: Prisma
  • WebSocket: ws library

โœจ Features

  • โœ… Signup / Login / Logout with JWT
  • โœ… Join or create chat rooms
  • โœ… Real-time messaging via WebSockets
  • โœ… Typing indicators (whoโ€™s typing?)
  • โœ… Messages stored in PostgreSQL
  • โœ… Secure token-based auth

Each chat room works like a real-time space where users can message, see typing activity, and stay synced with others instantly.


๐Ÿ–ผ๏ธ Preview

_
See how the chat app works


๐Ÿง  Key Learnings

  • WebSocket architecture for multiple rooms requires clean message protocols and user-session tracking.
  • Prisma makes schema modeling and database integration straightforward.
  • Building a custom typing indicator system was surprisingly fun!

๐Ÿ”ฎ Whatโ€™s Next?

The chat system is just the beginning. Hereโ€™s whatโ€™s coming up:

  • ๐Ÿ“ Collaborative documents with Tiptap + Hocuspocus
  • ๐Ÿค– AI integration for:
    • Chat summarization
    • Contextual explanations of documents

This is shaping up to be a real-time, AI-powered team workspace tool.


๐Ÿ”— GitHub Repo

๐Ÿ‘‰ Check out the code on GitHub


Thanks for reading! This is part of a devlog-style series where Iโ€™ll be building the entire app in public. If you're interested in collaborative tools, AI integration, or full-stack dev, follow along. ๐Ÿš€

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