Architecture

Overview

Bantr is a monorepo built with Turborepo, consisting of multiple packages and applications:

bantr-stack/
├── bantr/
│   ├── apps/
│   │   ├── bantr-web          # Frontend — Vike + React 19 + Ant Design 6
│   │   ├── bantr-api          # Backend — Express + WebSocket + Prisma
│   │   └── bantr-docs         # Documentation — VitePress
│   ├── packages/
│   │   ├── bantr-ui           # Shared UI components
│   │   ├── bantr-prisma       # Database schema + Prisma client
│   │   └── bantr-types        # Shared Zod schemas + TypeScript types
│   └── modules/
│       └── bantr-analytics    # Pluggable analytics (GA4)

Frontend (bantr-web)

• Framework: Vike (SSR + client-side routing)
• UI: React 19 + Ant Design 6 (dark theme)
• Styling: Inline styles + Ant Design tokens
• State: React Context (UserContext, WebSocketContext)
• Build: Vite 7

Pages

Route	Purpose
/	Main chat (welcome room)
/r/:room	Room-specific chat
/login	Sign in form
/register	Account creation
/u/:user	User profile

Backend (bantr-api)

• Server: Express 4 + native HTTP
• WebSocket: ws library on same server
• Database: PostgreSQL via Prisma (with in-memory fallback)
• Auth: bcrypt (12 rounds) + httpOnly session cookies
• Runtime: tsx (TypeScript directly, no build step)

Data Flow

graph LR
    A[Browser] -->|REST| B[Express API]
    A -->|WebSocket| C[WS Server]
    B -->|Prisma| D[(PostgreSQL)]
    C -->|Broadcast| A
    B -->|Cookie| A

Rate Limits

Scope	Limit
General API	60 req/min per IP
Auth endpoints	10 req/min per IP
Message posting	20 req/min per IP
Free posts	5/day per user

Shared Packages

@bantr/bantr-ui

Reusable React components: MessageRow, RoomItem, StatusBadge, BantrLogo, UserIdBadge, SectionLabel. Source-only (no build step — Vite resolves TS directly).

@bantr/bantr-prisma

Prisma schema + singleton client. Models: User, Session, Room, Message, RoomMembership.

@bantr/bantr-types

Zod schemas for messages, users, rooms, and WebSocket protocol messages.

Deployment

Deployed on Railway with automatic GitHub push-to-deploy:

• bantr-web → bantr.ing
• bantr-api → api.bantr.ing
• bantr-docs → docs.bantr.dev