Orbit is a modern communication platform built on IRC. Not an IRC client - a polished client layer, a voice/video service, and a file storage gateway, orchestrated into one cohesive product over infrastructure communities have trusted for thirty years.
Everything your friend group needs from Discord, privately, on a $5 VPS. docker compose up.
This repository is the client monorepo: the Vue 3 application that runs as a web app, desktop shell, and embeddable widget. The full system design lives in the orbit-spec repository.
Orbit owns only the parts where product value lives - the clients, Satellite (voice/video), and Depot (file access / permissions). The IRC server, identity provider, and storage backend are stock and adopted.
| Component | Role |
|---|---|
| Clients | Desktop + Mobile (Tauri), web app, embeddable widget - this repo. |
| Uplink | Any stock IRCv3 server (Ergo is the reference). Text, history, presence, signaling. |
| Satellite | Real-time voice, video, and screen sharing over LiveKit. |
| Depot | Thin storage gateway over S3-compatible backends or local disk. |
| Transponder | Any OIDC provider (Keycloak, Authentik, Supabase). One login, verified everywhere. |
The workspace uses pnpm with a dependency catalog and vite-plus (vp) as the task runner. Requires Node >= 24.
pnpm install # install workspace dependencies
pnpm dev # web dev server (runs apps/web)
pnpm ready # gate: vp check && vp run -r test && vp run -r buildScoped and recursive commands:
vp run web#dev # Vite dev server for the web app
vp run web#build # build the web app / PWA
vp run -r test # run every test suite
vp run -r build # build every package and appThe complete design spec - architecture, components, identity, clients, infrastructure, ADRs, and research tracks - lives in orbit-spec. Start with the Platform Comparison and Design Philosophy.