Zep

Zep is a self-hosted, privacy-oriented chat application built with Svelte 5 and SpacetimeDB. Designed as a modern, lightweight alternative to commercial platforms, it prioritizes performance, low-latency communication, and high feature density without the bloat.

🚀 Features

Zep offers a rich, Discord-inspired user experience backed by a highly scalable, WebAssembly-powered database architecture.

• Multi-Server & Channel Support: Organize your communities with dedicated Text, Voice, and Threaded channels.
• Blazing Fast Pagination: Uses a sophisticated hybrid "Recent Activity Cache" to load channels instantly, with on-demand expansion for deep history scrollback.
• Real-Time Voice & Video: Integrated WebRTC signaling via SpacetimeDB for low-latency audio channels and screen sharing.
• Rich Media & Profiles: Support for custom emojis, image uploads (up to 10MB), and customizable user profiles (avatars, banners, biographies).
• Modern Svelte 5 UI: Built with Svelte Runes for granular reactivity, featuring custom portaled dropdowns, context menus, and a responsive design that adapts to your screen.
• Tauri Ready: The Vite configuration is tailored for easy packaging as a native desktop application via Tauri.

🗺️ Roadmap

We are actively developing Zep. Here is what's coming next:

• Direct Messaging: Private, 1-on-1 conversations outside of server contexts.
• Mentions & Notifications: Robust @user and @role tagging with RLS-protected notification delivery.
• Read Status: Unread badges and indicators for channels and servers.
• Message Interactions: Replying directly to messages (in addition to threading), grouping consecutive messages, and GIF integration.
• Server Management: Private servers, invite links, role-based permission systems, and custom server avatars.
• Customization: Full theming support (Dark/Light mode toggles) and hotkey shortcuts.

🛠️ Technology Stack

• Frontend: Svelte 5 (TypeScript, Vite, Vanilla CSS)
• Backend: SpacetimeDB (TypeScript/WASM module)
• Real-time Comms: WebRTC (Peer-to-peer audio/video)
• Desktop: Tauri (Planned/Configured)

Architecture Highlights

Zep leverages SpacetimeDB's client-side cache model to eliminate traditional REST API bottlenecks.

• Zero-Latency Switching: The client subscribes to a lightweight recent_message table for all joined servers on startup. This populates the UI instantly when switching channels.
• Surgical Subscriptions: The heavy message history table is only subscribed to on-demand when a user explicitly requests older messages, saving bandwidth and memory.
• WASM Reducers: All database mutations (sending messages, updating profiles) are handled by deterministic TypeScript reducers compiled to WebAssembly and executed transactionally on the server.

📦 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• pnpm
• SpacetimeDB CLI (spacetime)

Backend Setup (SpacetimeDB)

1. Navigate to the backend module directory:

   cd spacetimedb
   

2. Install dependencies:

   npm install
   

3. Publish the module to your SpacetimeDB instance (e.g., maincloud or a local instance). Note: The first publish creates the database.

   spacetime publish --server maincloud zep
   

4. Generate the TypeScript bindings for the frontend:

   npm run spacetime:generate
   

Frontend Setup (Svelte 5)

1. Navigate to the project root:

   cd ..
   

2. Install dependencies:

   pnpm install
   

3. Configure your environment variables (create a .env.local file if necessary) to point to your published SpacetimeDB instance:

   VITE_SPACETIMEDB_HOST=wss://maincloud.spacetimedb.com
   VITE_SPACETIMEDB_DB_NAME=zep
   

4. Run the development server:

   pnpm run dev
   

📄 License

This project is open-source. Please see the LICENSE file for details.