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Hiroba

An open-source, always-on presence app for remote teams.

See who's around. Walk over. Start talking.

Download Hiroba · Self-hosting guide · Protocol

Why Hiroba

Remote teams already have tools for scheduled meetings. What they lose is the small moment before a conversation: seeing that someone is around, walking over, and asking, "Got a sec?"

Most virtual offices try to replace meeting software and grow heavy with video, recording, and integrations. Hiroba goes the other way:

• Presence at a glance — see who is active, away, busy, or already in a call.
• Conversation without ceremony — walk over for spatial voice, or page someone directly from the roster.
• Light by design — a native Tauri client built to stay open all day, not an Electron meeting suite.
• Open and self-hostable — run the Rust server yourself with no seat limits or feature gating, or use the managed hosted edition.

Keep your existing meeting tool. Hiroba is for everything between the meetings.

How It Works

1. Join your organization's floor and see where everyone is.
2. Move through the lobby or switch to a small team space.
3. Walk near someone to talk, or call any teammate with one click.
4. Leave Hiroba running so the floor is there when your team needs it.

Voice is WebRTC peer-to-peer. There is no always-on video, recording, or SFU. During a 1:1 page call, you can optionally share your screen directly with that peer.

Architecture

        ┌──────────────────────────────┐        WebRTC P2P (Opus)
        │  Rust signaling/state server │      ┌───────────────────────┐
        │  axum + tokio + WebSocket    │      ▼                       ▼
        │  • org roster / presence     │   ┌──────┐  audio only   ┌──────┐
        │  • per-space position relay  │   │client│◀────mesh─────▶│client│
        │  • per-space proximity       │   │Tauri │               │Tauri │
        │  • WebRTC signaling relay    │   └──────┘               └──────┘
        │  • paging (cross-space 1:1)  │       ▲                     ▲
        │  NEVER touches media         │       │  WebSocket (control)│
        └──────────────┬───────────────┘       └─────────────────────┘
                       └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The server only moves control data: the org roster, per-space positions, proximity decisions, and the WebRTC handshake. Audio never flows through the server — peers connect directly (P2P mesh). A team room or lobby of ≤5 is comfortable on a mesh. State is split into two scopes — an org roster sent to everyone, and per-space position/proximity/audio sent only to those in that space. The wire format is specified in PROTOCOL.md.

• Server (server/) — Rust, axum, tokio. Single static binary. Holds no media, so it stays tiny and idle-cheap.
• Client (client/) — Tauri (Rust shell + OS WebView) with a vanilla TypeScript + Canvas 2D frontend. Uses the OS WebView's built-in WebRTC, so the binary is far smaller and lighter than an Electron app.

Quick Start (Development)

Prerequisites: Rust (stable), Node 18+, and the Tauri v2 system dependencies for your OS.

# 1. Start the server (listens on 0.0.0.0:8787 by default)
cd server
cargo run                      # or: HIROBA_ADDR=0.0.0.0:9000 cargo run

# 2. Start the client (in another terminal)
cd client
npm install
npm run tauri:dev   # dev identifier (org.hiroba.app.dev) keeps WebView
                    # storage isolated from an installed release build

In the client's join screen, enter a display name, pick an avatar color, and point it at your server (ws://127.0.0.1:8787/ws for local dev). Open a second client instance to see two avatars; walk them together in the lobby to hear spatial voice fade in, or switch both to the same team tab for a group call. You start muted — click the mic button to go live.

Controls: WASD / arrow keys to move; the tabs (top) switch spaces; the sidebar lists the org — hit Call next to a member to page them.

Building Release Artifacts

# Server: a single optimized binary at server/target/release/hiroba-server
cd server && cargo build --release

# Client: native installers/bundles under client/src-tauri/target/release/bundle/
# The server URLs to bake in are required — the build fails without them
# (there is intentionally no loopback fallback in release bundles).
cd client && npm install
VITE_HIROBA_SERVER="wss://hiroba.example/ws" \
VITE_HIROBA_AUTH_SERVER="https://auth.hiroba.example" \
npm run tauri build

Self-Hosting

The server is a single binary with no required external services (no media server; optional SQLite via HIROBA_DB). See docs/SELF_HOSTING.md for deployment, configuration, firewall/NAT notes, and when you might need a TURN server.

A managed hosted edition (OAuth sign-in, invites, billing) is offered separately and is not part of this repository.

Landing Page

The marketing site (landing + pricing) lives in site/ as a dependency-free static site. Preview it locally with make site.

License

Apache-2.0. Includes a patent grant.

Brand assets are not covered by Apache-2.0. The "Hiroba" name, logo, app icons (app-icon.png, app-icon-macos.png), site favicon, and brand assets under site/ are excluded from the Apache-2.0 license grant. They may not be used to brand a fork or a derived service without permission. Everything else — code, docs, protocol — is Apache-2.0.