WeWatch — Watch Together, Anywhere

Social online cinema: watch YouTube, VK, Rutube, and 10+ other sources in perfect sync with friends, in real time.

Watch Party live sync · Direct messages · Friends · Telegram & Google auth · Web, Android and iOS clients

Website · Web App

---

What is WeWatch?

WeWatch lets you start a room, drop in a video link, and watch it together with friends — playback stays in sync for everyone, with live chat, reactions, and voice alongside the video. Built by Tezcode (Tashkent, Uzbekistan).

Key features:

• Watch Party — real-time synchronized playback (play/pause/seek) across every viewer in a room, with heartbeat-based drift correction
• Universal video extraction — YouTube (official embed), VK, Rutube, Twitch, Vimeo, TikTok, and more, via a dedicated extraction pipeline with an HLS proxy for CDN-restricted streams
• Direct messages — Telegram-style chat: replies, forwarding, mute/pin conversations, pinned messages, read receipts, realtime delivery over Socket.io
• Friends & social graph — friend requests, profiles, presence
• Auth — email/password, Google OAuth, Telegram OAuth
• Push & email — Firebase Cloud Messaging push notifications, transactional and campaign email
• Admin panel — moderation, app settings, room and account management

Tech Stack

Service / App	Tech	Port
services/auth	Node.js + Express + MongoDB	3001
services/user	Node.js + Express + MongoDB	3002
services/content	Node.js + Express + Elasticsearch	3003
services/watch-party	Express + Socket.io + Redis	3004
services/notification	Express + Firebase FCM + Bull	3007
services/admin	Express + MongoDB	3008
services/payment	Express + MongoDB — tezcode-billing bridge	3009
apps/mobile	React Native + Expo (Android + iOS)	—
apps/web	Next.js — marketing site (wewatch.uz)	—
apps/app-web	Next.js — web app (app.wewatch.uz)	—
apps/admin-ui	React + Vite admin dashboard	5173
Database	MongoDB Atlas	—
Cache / pub-sub	Redis 7	—
Search	Elasticsearch	—

Monorepo: npm workspaces (services/*, apps/*, shared).

Architecture

Node.js microservices, each independently deployable to Railway.

  apps/mobile, apps/web, apps/app-web, apps/admin-ui
              │
              │  (each client calls every service's own Railway URL directly —
              │   no shared API gateway)
   ┌──────┬───┴────┬───────────┬──────────────┬───────┐
   ▼      ▼        ▼           ▼              ▼       ▼
 auth   user    content   watch-party   notification admin
                            │
                      Socket.io + Redis
                   (realtime sync, DMs, presence)

shared/ holds types, constants (incl. Socket.io event names), and utils used by every service — changes there are cross-cutting and reviewed accordingly.

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 20, npm ≥ 10
• Docker + Docker Compose
• MongoDB Atlas cluster
• Redis 7
• Elasticsearch

Local Development

npm install
cp services/auth/.env.example services/auth/.env
# (repeat for each service)
npm run docker:dev        # MongoDB + Redis + Elasticsearch via Docker
npm run dev:auth          # start an individual service

Production

docker compose -f docker-compose.prod.yml up -d --build

Services deploy to Railway via GitHub Actions on push to main (.github/workflows/deploy-prod.yml), gated by a typecheck/test pass. See DR-PLAN.md for backup and disaster recovery.

Environment Variables

Each service has its own .env.example. Required across all services:

• MONGO_URI — MongoDB Atlas connection string
• REDIS_URL — Redis connection string
• JWT_SECRET / JWT_REFRESH_SECRET — signing keys
• SENTRY_DSN — error monitoring (optional, disables Sentry if absent)

Testing

npm run test:api     # Playwright API tests (all services)
npm run test:smoke   # @smoke tagged tests only
npm run test:report  # open HTML report

Backup

Daily MongoDB backup to S3/R2 via GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/backup.yml). Recovery procedure: see DR-PLAN.md.

Docs

• CLAUDE.md — development conventions and task tracking
• DR-PLAN.md — disaster recovery plan
• docs/Tasks.md — open tasks
• docs/Done.md — completed tasks

---