eDad Chat — the dad you never had (chat-in-place variant)

A different pattern from apps/edad/: instead of creating a character on Eliza Cloud and redirecting users to cloud/chat/<characterId>, this variant keeps the chat UI on the app's own domain and proxies /v1/messages calls to Eliza Cloud with the app + affiliate code attached as headers.

Shipped live at https://eliza.nubs.site/apps/edad/ by RemilioNubilio.

Why this pattern exists

• Keeps users on the miniapp's domain end-to-end (branding, UX continuity, embeddable elsewhere)
• Users sign in to Eliza Cloud once and chat with their own org credit balance — no per-app credit pool to top up
• App creator earns the inference markup % on every reply via recordCreatorEarnings; affiliate code adds a separate share
• No character registration, no anonymous session management — lean proxy + minimal frontend

How it works

browser                                app backend                       eliza cloud
┌──────────────────┐                  ┌──────────────────┐              ┌───────────────────┐
│ index.html       │  POST /api/msgs  │ proxy.ts         │  /v1/messages │ debits user's    │
│ + chat UI JS     │─────────────────▶│ adds x-app-id    │──────────────▶│ org balance      │
│                  │                  │ + x-affiliate-   │              │ adds markup → me │
│ Steward JWT      │                  │   code header    │              │ creator earnings │
│ (OAuth required) │                  │ + Authorization  │              │ + affiliate share│
└──────────────────┘                  └──────────────────┘              └───────────────────┘

Files

Env required

ELIZA_APP_ID=<uuid of app registered via POST /api/v1/apps>
ELIZA_CLOUD_URL=https://www.elizacloud.ai
ELIZA_AFFILIATE_CODE=AFF-XXXXXX     # your affiliate code — drives per-call affiliate share earnings

There is no operator-paid fallback. The proxy rejects requests without a Steward JWT with 401. Reasoning:

• The whole point of monetization is that creators + affiliates earn a real cut of the user's credits. An operator-paid path bypassed that math entirely (the user "chats on the house" and nothing flows to anyone).
• One auth path is simpler to reason about than two; eliminates the awkward "chatting on the house" UI state.
• Free-tier promo is better expressed as a welcome-credit grant on the user's org (cloud already does this — new orgs get $5 on first sync).

Architectural trade-offs vs apps/edad/ (character creator variant)

Neither is strictly better — they serve different distribution models. edad/ wins for signup-funnel miniapps; edad-chat/ wins for embedded chat on a branded domain.

Deploy checklist

Option A — embedded under a host Next.js app

1. Register app via POST https://www.elizacloud.ai/api/v1/apps with { name, app_url, skipGitHubRepo: true } → get app_id back
2. (Optional) bump inference_markup_percentage on the app row to a value > 0 so you earn the markup share on every chat
3. Go to https://www.elizacloud.ai/dashboard/affiliates → create affiliate code, set affiliate markup %
4. Set ELIZA_APP_ID and ELIZA_AFFILIATE_CODE env vars on the host
5. Serve public/ as static assets; wire api/proxy.ts as a server route at /api/*
6. Users hit your site → sign in with Eliza Cloud → chat → app creator earns markup; affiliate earns affiliate share; user spends their own org credits

Option B — standalone container on Eliza Cloud

Self-hosting closes the loop: app earnings refill the org's credit balance via the earnings auto-fund service, container daily-billing keeps debiting that balance, and the app keeps itself alive as long as it earns enough.

# 1. build + push to your ECR (or any registry the cloud can pull from)
docker build -t edad-chat:latest -f apps/edad-chat/Dockerfile apps/edad-chat
docker tag edad-chat:latest <account>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/edad-chat:latest
docker push <account>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/edad-chat:latest

# 2. POST /api/v1/containers (use any cloud API key with deploy scope)
curl -X POST https://www.elizacloud.ai/api/v1/containers \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $ELIZA_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "edad-chat",
    "project_name": "edad",
    "port": 3000,
    "cpu": 256,
    "memory": 512,
    "ecr_image_uri": "<account>.dkr.ecr.<region>.amazonaws.com/edad-chat:latest",
    "health_check_path": "/health",
    "environment_vars": {
      "ELIZA_APP_ID": "<your-app-uuid>",
      "ELIZA_AFFILIATE_CODE": "<your-affiliate-code>",
      "ELIZA_CLOUD_URL": "https://www.elizacloud.ai"
    }
  }'

# 3. (one-time, on the org dashboard) enable earnings auto-fund:
#    PUT /api/v1/billing/earnings-auto-fund
#    { "enabled": true, "amount": 5, "threshold": 2, "keepBalance": 10 }
#    → when org credits dip below $2, auto-credit $5 from your redeemable
#      earnings, keeping at least $10 cashable at all times.

The container listens on :3000, exposes /health for the ECS health check, and the same /api/* routes as the embedded variant. No code differs between Option A and B — just the host process.

License / attribution

Built by RemilioNubilio. Inspired by Shaw's original eDad spec in apps/edad/.