The latest articles on DEV Community by Jacob (@jorbach). https://dev.to/jorbach https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3913105%2F0342b458-3288-4b15-8994-90825f5d048d.png https://dev.to/jorbach en Jacob Tue, 05 May 2026 03:56:51 +0000 https://dev.to/jorbach/how-i-built-a-10kb-embeddable-chat-widget-on-cloudflare-workers-37i8 https://dev.to/jorbach/how-i-built-a-10kb-embeddable-chat-widget-on-cloudflare-workers-37i8 <p>I wanted to add live chat to my WordPress sites without loading a 500KB third-party script. So I built my own.</p> <p><a href="https://ghostchat.dev" rel="noopener noreferrer">GhostChat</a> is an open source embeddable <br> chat widget that runs on Cloudflare Workers and Durable Objects. <br> The client widget is under 10KB. Here's how it works.</p> <h2> The architecture </h2> <ul> <li> <strong>Widget:</strong> Vanilla JS, no framework, ~10KB</li> <li> <strong>Backend:</strong> Cloudflare Workers + Durable Objects for persistent WebSocket connections</li> <li> <strong>Payments:</strong> Stripe for the hosted tier</li> <li> <strong>Self-hostable:</strong> Bring your own Cloudflare account</li> </ul> <h2> Why Cloudflare Durable Objects? </h2> <p>Durable Objects give you stateful serverless — each chat session <br> lives in its own DO instance. No Redis, no external DB needed for <br> real-time state. It's genuinely elegant for this use case.</p> <h2> The "bring your own agent" model </h2> <p>GhostChat supports a webhook architecture so you can pipe messages to any AI agent, your own backend, or a human operator. You're not locked into our AI.</p> <h2> WordPress plugin </h2> <p>There's a WordPress plugin available so site owners can drop it in without touching code:<br> <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ghostchat" rel="noopener noreferrer">wordpress.org/plugins/ghostchat</a></p> <h2> Try it </h2> <ul> <li>Site: <a href="https://ghostchat.dev" rel="noopener noreferrer">ghostchat.dev</a> </li> <li>WordPress plugin: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/ghostchat" rel="noopener noreferrer">wordpress.org/plugins/ghostchat</a> </li> <li>Widget source: <a href="https://github.com/jacoborbach/ghostchat-widget" rel="noopener noreferrer">github.com/jacoborbach/ghostchat-widget</a> </li> </ul> <p>Happy to answer questions about the Durable Objects architecture <br> in the comments</p> cloudflare javascript opensource webdev