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SmartyDevs
Engineering · 07

Real-time that survives reconnection.

Collaborative editors, live dashboards, presence, chat, notifications and event streams — engineered with the realities of networks, reconnection and conflict resolution treated seriously.

§ 01The problem

The problem we solve

Real-time looks easy in a demo and gets hard the moment two users edit the same document on flaky Wi-Fi. Reconnection, ordering, presence, conflict resolution, server fan-out, backpressure — the things that fail under real load. We've shipped collaboration and live systems at scale and we know what breaks first.

§ 02Capabilities

What we ship

  • 01WebSocket and Server-Sent Events backends with reconnection
  • 02Presence, cursors, live selection and awareness primitives
  • 03Collaborative editing with CRDTs (Yjs, Automerge)
  • 04Operational transform where CRDTs don't fit
  • 05Live dashboards driven by streams, not polling
  • 06Chat and messaging with delivery, read and typing receipts
  • 07Push notification fan-out at scale
  • 08Event streaming with Kafka or Redpanda
  • 09Backpressure, rate limiting and graceful degradation
  • 10Observability tuned for long-lived connections
§ 03Deliverables

What you receive

  • Real-time backend with documented invariants
  • Client libraries handling reconnection and offline gracefully
  • Load-test report against realistic concurrent-user scenarios
  • Runbook for the failure modes specific to real-time systems
§ 04Stack

Stack we reach for

Node.js · Go
Postgres · Redis
Yjs · Automerge
Liveblocks
PartyKit
Cloudflare Durable Objects
Kafka · Redpanda
OpenTelemetry
§ 05Ideal for

Ideal for

  • Collaborative tools (docs, design, project management)
  • Live dashboards and operational tooling
  • Trading and finance interfaces requiring fresh data
  • Multiplayer features in SaaS products
§ 06Process

How an engagement runs

  1. 01

    Architecture

    Connection model, state model, fan-out and persistence chosen for your scale. Trade-offs written down.

  2. 02

    Foundations

    Reliable transport, reconnection, presence and observability — the boring layer that everything sits on.

  3. 03

    Feature delivery

    Collaboration, chat, notifications or whatever specific real-time surface you need, built on the foundation.

  4. 04

    Load test & launch

    Tested under realistic concurrent load before users see it. Documented failure modes.

§ 07Engagement

How to engage

01

Prototype

2 — 4 weeks

Proof of architecture on your specific scenario before committing to the full build.

02

Real-time Build

8 — 14 weeks

Production real-time feature shipped end-to-end with documentation and load-test evidence.

§ 08Common questions

Frequently asked.

01Do we need our own infrastructure or can we use a SaaS?

Both are valid. Liveblocks, PartyKit and Cloudflare Durable Objects cover many cases at lower operational cost. Self-hosted makes sense for specific scale, compliance or cost reasons — we will tell you which fits.

02How do you handle offline?

Depends on the feature. For collaboration we use CRDTs that merge offline edits cleanly; for chat we queue and replay; for dashboards we make staleness visible to the user.

Have a problem worth solving well?

Tell us the outcome you want. We'll tell you what it takes — honestly, within a week, in writing.

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