PeerCall — Modern, Secure Real-Time Video Chat 🎥🔒

A community-driven, secure, real-time video chat app built with web technologies.

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Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• Vision and Design Principles
• Goals & Non-Goals
• Key Features
• Tech Stack
• Architecture Overview
• Folder Structure
• Getting Started
• Testing & Quality Gates
• Contributing
• Issue & Release Process
• Branching & Git Workflow
• PR Template & Review Checklist
• Code Style Guide
• Security & Licensing
• Roadmap
• Project Governance
• Maintainers & Contact
• Acknowledgements

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Project Overview

PeerCall delivers secure, privacy-respecting, real-time video communication combining peer-to-peer WebRTC with solid authentication and session management.

Watch PeerCall in action:

A smooth real-time WebRTC video call experience.

Seamless screen sharing capability.

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Vision and Design Principles

• 🚀 Easy onboarding: Clone, run, and start developing quickly.
• 🤝 Community-first: Open governance and transparent development.
• 🔒 Security: Token rotation, secure sessions, HTTP-only cookies.
• ⚡ Performance: Responsive, efficient, modern browser compatibility.

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Goals & Non-Goals

Goals	Non-Goals
Secure, user-friendly video chat platform	Enterprise-level scaling out-of-the-box
Clear and welcoming contribution process	Polished final UI/UX design
Strong CI/CD pipelines and reproducible builds	Complex SFU cluster deployments initially

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Key Features

• 🔐 Secure sign-up/sign-in with refresh token rotation
• 🔗 Create/join rooms using short shareable links
• 🎥 WebRTC peer-to-peer media (audio/video) with mute & toggle controls
• 💬 In-call chat overlay for messaging during video calls
• 📱 Device & session listing with revocation for security
• 🔄 Lightweight backend for authentication, signaling, and presence

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Tech Stack

Frontend

• React + TypeScript
• Vite
• Framer Motion for animations
• CSS Modules / Tailwind CSS

Backend

• Node.js + TypeScript
• Express or NestJS
• MongoDB or PostgreSQL
• JWT + httpOnly cookie session management

Real-Time

• WebRTC for media streams
• socket.io or WebSocket for signaling & presence

Tooling

• ESLint, Prettier for code quality
• Jest or Vitest for unit testing
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD

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Architecture Overview

graph TD
Client[Client (Browser)]
Server[API \& Signaling Server]
Database[Database]

Client -->|Requests Access Token| Server
Client -->|WebRTC Signaling \& Media| Server
Server -->|Stores Sessions \& Tokens| Database

Architecture components of PeerCall showing how client, signaling server, and database interact.

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Folder Structure

/
├─ README.md
├─ LICENSE
├─ .github/
├─ frontend/
│  ├─ src/
│  ├─ public/
│  └─ package.json
├─ server/
│  ├─ src/
│  └─ package.json
├─ scripts/
└─ tests/

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18
• npm >= 9 or Yarn

Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/OPCODE-Open-Spring-Fest/PeerCall.git
cd PeerCall
cd frontend
npm install
cd ../server
npm install

Setup environment variables

• Copy .env.example to .env in both frontend and server folders and fill in the required values.

Run local servers

# Run backend API server

cd server \&\& npm run dev

# Run frontend dev server (open new terminal)

cd ../frontend \&\& npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173 to view the app.

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Testing & Quality Gates

• ✅ Type-check: npm run type-check
• ✅ Linting: npm run lint (npm run lint:fix to fix issues)
• ✅ Unit Tests: npm run test
• ✅ Build verification: npm run build
• ✅ Continuous Integration with GitHub Actions on all PRs and main branch.

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Contributing

Please read our Contribution Guide for detailed instructions. Quick start:

1. Pick an issue labelled good first issue or help wanted and add proper descritpion of your apporach and how you want to contribute.
2. Fork and create a feature branch: git checkout -b feat/awesome-feature
3. Commit often with clear, conventional commit messages.
4. Run tests and linting locally before PR.
5. Open a PR referencing relevant issues and describe your changes.
6. Engage in code review until PR is approved and merged.

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Issue & Release Process

• Use descriptive labels like type: bug, area: frontend, help wanted etc.
• File issues using templates for reproducibility.
• Releases follow semantic versioning. Changelog auto-generated.

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Branching & Git Workflow

• Feature branches use prefixes like feat/, fix/, chore/, and docs/.
• PRs should be concise and pass all CI checks.
• Rebase to keep history clean before merging.

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PR Template & Review Checklist

## Summary

## Related Issues

## How to Test

- [x] CI passes
- [x] Code style \& tests updated

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Code Style Guide

• Strict TypeScript typing – use readonly and unknown when appropriate
• ESLint and Prettier enforced for consistency
• Modular, testable, focused components and functions
• Clear API typings on exports and interfaces

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Security & Licensing

• Responsible Disclosure guidelines in SECURITY.md
• Contributor Code of Conduct in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• Licensed under MIT (see the LICENSE file)

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Roadmap

• v0.1: MVP - authentication + basic peer-to-peer WebRTC calls
• v0.2: Session management, chat overlay, UI improvements, e2e tests
• v1.0: Accessibility audit, stability enhancements, optional SFU integration

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Project Governance

Community-driven with maintainer oversight. Contributions, discussions, and feedback are welcomed to shape project direction.Please star the repo

Maintainers & Contact

• Project Manager: @04shubham7

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to all PeerCall contributors, WebRTC community (webrtc.org), and open-source projects making this possible.