Chat Room (Effect)

Example project demonstrating a real-time chat room built with the Effect SDK for Rivet Actors.

Getting Started

git clone https://github.com/rivet-dev/rivet.git
cd rivet/examples/chat-room-effect
npm install
npm run dev

In a separate terminal, run a client against the server:

npm run client      # Effect client
npm run client:raw  # plain RivetKit client

Effect-native actors: Define actors with Actor.make and implement them with toLayer, composing actor logic from Effect Layers and services
Typed action protocols: Actions are standalone Action.make values with effect/Schema payloads, successes, and errors validated end to end
Typed domain errors: MemberNotInRoomError and BannedWordsError flow through the action error channel and are caught by tag on the client
Actor-to-actor RPC: The ChatRoom actor calls a separate Moderator actor to screen messages, using the same client API as client-to-actor calls
Persistent state and SQLite: Room membership lives in persisted actor state while message history is stored in the actor's SQLite database
Scheduling: A welcome message is scheduled after a member joins and dispatched back through the actor's own action

The example splits each actor into a public contract and a server-only implementation:

Chat room contract (src/actors/chat-room/api.ts): Declares the ChatRoom actor, its actions, and its typed errors
Chat room implementation (src/actors/chat-room/live.ts): Implements the wake scope, state schema, SQLite migration, and action handlers
Moderator (src/actors/moderator/api.ts, live.ts): A second actor that screens messages for banned words
Server (src/main.ts): Composes the actor layers and serves them with Registry.serve
Clients (src/client.ts, src/client-raw.ts): An Effect client using the typed ChatRoom.client accessor, and a plain RivetKit client showing the same actors reached from non-Effect code

MIT