PartyKit is an open source platform for developing multiplayer, real-time applications.

This is a PartyKit project using Next.js bootstrapped with partykit-nextjs-chat-template.

There's a live hosted demo of this template at https://partykit-nextjs-chat-template.vercel.app/.

Getting Started

First, copy the .env.example file to .env in the project root.

cp .env.example .env

Then, open the created .env file and fill in the missing environment variables.

Then, run the development server:

npm install
npm run dev

This will start the PartyKit development server at port 1999, and a Next.js development server at port 3000.

Open http://localhost:3000 with your browser to see the result.

What's included

This template application demonstrates various use cases of PartyKit.

The /party directory contains partykit servers with the following examples:

• 💬 chatRoom.ts — Real-time chat room with persistence
• 👩‍👩‍👦‍👦 chatRooms.ts — Presence and room-to-room communication
• 🤖 ai.ts — AI NPC chatroom participant using LLMs
• 🐭 cursors.ts — Shared cursors

The /app directory contains a Next.js 13 application, demonstrating client-side usage of PartyKit, including:

• 📡 chat/page.tsx — Server Rendering in React Server Components
• 📱 RoomList.tsx — Client Rendering with live WebSockets
• 👮‍♀️ Room.tsx — A real-time chatroom with authentication
• 🖱️ Cursors.tsx — Live cursors
• 🚥 ConnectionStatus.tsx — Connection status indicator

Deploy

Deploy the PartyKit Server on PartyKit

When you're ready to deploy your application to the internet, run the following command to deploy the PartyKit Server:

npx partykit deploy

This will deploy the code to your PartyKit account — and if you don't have an account yet, we'll create one as part of the deployment.

Configure environment variables

In development mode, PartyKit uses your .env file to read configuration values.

For production, you'll need to set the production environment variables:

# (Optional) Set your OpenAI API key to enable the AI chat participant in production
npx partykit env add OPENAI_API_KEY

# Redeploy with new variables
npx partykit deploy

Deploy the website on Vercel

The easiest way to deploy the Next.js frontend for your PartyKit app is to use the Vercel Platform from the creators of Next.js.

When you deploy the site to Vercel, remember to add the environment variables from your .env file in your Vercel project dashboard.

The NEXT_PUBLIC_PARTYKIT_HOST variable should be set to be the domain of your partykit server, e.g. my-project.my-username.partykit.dev. The domain name will be displayed when you deploy the PartyKit project.

Learn More

To learn more about PartyKit, take a look at PartyKit documentation.