Forge realtime

forge-realtime: Realtime communication

Purpose

Inspect WebSocket, SSE, subscription, and presence flows for authorization, lifecycle, ordering, abuse, and recovery.

This is an agent playbook, not a claim of standalone analyzer coverage. Apply

fullstack-forge/references/shared/module-contract.md

for common applicability, evidence, command-safety, mutation, verification, and completion rules.

Never hide failed checks or claim that an operation ran when it did not.

Automatic activation signals

Activate when a request or direct repository evidence involves realtime communication, when the user explicitly names forge-realtime, or when discovery proves an applicable boundary.

• WebSockets, SSE, subscriptions, live presence, or collaborative state

When not to activate

• Request-response applications with no persistent or pushed channel

Automated support

Relevant discovery inputs are:

• connection handlers
• channel and subscription policies
• client reconnection code

Available deterministic support, where present:

• Use inspect-routes for its bounded evidence when present; treat unavailable runtime evidence as NOT_VERIFIED.
• Use inspect-authorization for its bounded evidence when present; treat unavailable runtime evidence as NOT_VERIFIED.

Agent inspection procedure

1. Inventory WebSocket and SSE endpoints and subscriptions; verify authentication at connect and authorization per channel or topic.
2. Trace tenant and user separation of channels, presence, and broadcast fan-out.
3. Exercise reconnection: missed-message recovery, ordering, duplicates, and state resynchronization after a gap.
4. Check backpressure and slow-consumer handling, message-size limits, and rate limits per connection.
5. Verify authentication refresh on long-lived connections, and cleanup of subscriptions, timers, and server resources on disconnect.

Manual inspection requirements:

• Observe network interruption and multi-device behavior
• Review gateway limits and load-balancer timeouts

Stack-specific guidance:

• Enforce authorization server-side for each resource, not just at connection time

Evidence to collect

For formal findings, also follow fullstack-forge/references/PROTOCOL.md. Record the module's inspected boundary, relevant tests, direct observations, and unavailable evidence.

Primary standards used as criteria, not proof of compliance:

• RFC 6455
• OWASP WebSocket Security Cheat Sheet

Common production failures

• Authenticate handshakes and authorize every subscribe, publish, and resource action
• Inspect token expiry, revocation, origin, message schema and size, rate limits, backpressure, heartbeats, cleanup, and connection caps
• Check ordering, deduplication, cursor/resume, reconnect storms, stale presence, tenant namespaces, and sensitive errors

Missing-control checks

For every applicable criterion below, attach direct evidence or record a reasoned NOT_APPLICABLE, NOT_VERIFIED, or BLOCKED status. The list is a routing checklist, not evidence by itself.

• WebSocket authorization
• SSE authorization
• Reconnection
• Ordering
• Duplicate messages
• Presence
• Backpressure
• Resource cleanup
• Tenant-separated channels
• Rate limits
• Offline recovery
• Authentication refresh
• Subscription cleanup
• Fan-out
• Message size

Commands and tools

• Run forge realtime audit --json or fullstack-forge realtime audit --json when an explicit audit is requested and the CLI is installed. Normal feature work does not require it.
• Use the deterministic support named above only for its documented bounded evidence.

Safe fixes

• Add message bounds, schema validation, and cleanup
• Namespace channels and add bounded reconnect jitter

Approval-required changes

• Changing delivery guarantees, channel authorization, or gateway topology

Verification

• Test expired, revoked, unauthorized, duplicate, out-of-order, and oversized messages
• Disconnect abruptly and confirm cleanup and resume semantics

Completion contract

Apply the shared module contract and the module-specific limitations below.

Known limitations

• Gateway and network behavior require runtime load evidence