Retrocast

A self-hosted Discord clone inspired by the simplicity of Discord circa 2015-2016. Text channels, voice chat, roles, permissions — no bloat. Built for a small friend group to run on a single machine.

Architecture

retrocast/          Go backend (REST API + WebSocket gateway)
retrocast-client/   iOS/macOS client (planned)

Server stack: Go, PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO (file storage), LiveKit (voice)

Server layout

cmd/retrocast/         Application entrypoint
internal/
  api/                 REST handlers and routing (Echo)
  auth/                Argon2id passwords, JWT tokens, middleware
  config/              Environment-based configuration
  database/            PostgreSQL repositories (pgx)
  gateway/             WebSocket server, presence, typing indicators
  models/              Domain structs
  permissions/         Bitfield RBAC with channel overrides
  redis/               Redis client (caching, rate limiting, presence)
  snowflake/           Distributed ID generation
migrations/            SQL schema migrations (up/down)

Quick start

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25+
• Docker and Docker Compose

Run with Docker Compose

cd retrocast
docker compose up --build

This starts the API server on :8080 along with PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO, and LiveKit.

Run locally (development)

Start the dependencies:

cd retrocast
docker compose up db redis minio livekit

Then build and run the server:

make run

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
DATABASE_URL	postgres://retrocast:password@localhost:5432/retrocast?sslmode=disable	PostgreSQL connection string
REDIS_URL	redis://localhost:6379	Redis connection string
JWT_SECRET	change-me-in-production	Secret for signing JWT tokens
SERVER_ADDR	:8080	HTTP listen address
MINIO_ENDPOINT	—	MinIO S3-compatible endpoint
MINIO_ACCESS_KEY	—	MinIO access key
MINIO_SECRET_KEY	—	MinIO secret key
LIVEKIT_URL	—	LiveKit server URL
LIVEKIT_API_KEY	—	LiveKit API key
LIVEKIT_API_SECRET	—	LiveKit API secret

Running tests

cd retrocast
make test

Contributing

All changes to main must go through a pull request with at least one approved review. See the system design document for architecture details before making changes.

License

This project is unlicensed. All rights reserved.