ADR-010: Chat versus Live/Community boundary

Status: Accepted and executed 2026-09-23 (cutover 02:03 UTC). Governs Wave 6.

Context and current evidence

Before the cutover, Live's chat was one of its largest subsystems, all in-process: the /ws/chat WebSocket server, DMs, history, TTS, soundboard, moderation, the word filter and the deploy-notice card, plus about 20 tables. It was used every day by the most active streamer. Community already owned pastes and discussion (ADR-011).

Decision

• OpenVibe.Chat owns conversation. That covers:
• the chat socket protocol, messages, DMs and DM blocks;
• TTS voice overrides and channel sounds;
• relay users, the IP-approval queue and first chats;
• the chat moderation log.

These twelve tables are Chat's. Chat stores the Network subject next to Live's legacy ids.

• Live keeps the channel product:
• channel moderators and settings, emotes, user tags and chat-AI tables. Chat stages copies and reads the live values; they move when their writers move.
• the media-request queue (every writer is Live's queue).
• stream presence and discovery.
• Community keeps threaded discussion. Comments on entities, the forum and Pulse stay in Community (ADR-011). Chat is real-time conversation, not threads.
• Interfaces:
• Chat reads Live's chat context through /internal/chat-context/* (live.chat_context.read).
• Chat asks Live for effects through /internal/chat-effects/* (live.chat_effects.write), and Live re-checks every effect it performs for a person.
• Chat mirrors its rows back to Live's read copy (live.chat_mirror.write).
• Live's remaining chat writers forward to Chat (chat.live_bridge.write).
• All of these are service tokens, and all refuse traffic that came through nginx.
• Browsers are unchanged. nginx routes the chat paths of openvibe.live to Chat, so no client change was needed.
• Events: chat.message.created (public), chat.dm.created (the subject only, never the text) and chat.moderation.action (internal).

Alternatives considered

• Rewriting chat as a new service with a new protocol: rejected, because it would break every open client and the overlays.
• Moving the channel tables in the same wave: rejected, because their writers (the dashboard and emote uploads) have not moved.

Migration consequences

• Live's chat tables stay a read mirror, so home stats, recaps, AI context and /api/mod keep working. The mirror retires in a later wave.
• Side effects that used to be in-process now reach Live over HTTP, so they arrive after the broadcast. These are coin replies, AI-viewer reactions, translations, and arena and media replies.

Rollback

1. Remove the nginx include.
2. Drain Chat's mirror to Live.
3. Remove CHAT_AUTHORITY and restart Live.

Live's tables are complete through the mirror. The steps are in OpenVibe.Chat's docs/cutover.md.

Acceptance tests

• Read parity was checked at the cutover: 15 of 15 paths identical, and the second import pass held nothing.
• The chat socket joins through the public URL.
• A Live restart does not end chat sessions; Chat keeps serving from its cache.
• A DM event never carries the message text.