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DrawyParty: Low-Latency Collaborative Whiteboard with Cloudflare PartyKit

Ultra-low-latency, edge-powered collaborative whiteboards powered by Excalidraw and Cloudflare PartyKit.

🚀 Live Demo: https://drawyparty.pratyay.online/ | 📦 GitHub: Pratyay360/drawy-party

What is DrawyParty?

Section titled “What is DrawyParty?”

DrawyParty is a performance-focused, edge-first variant of Drawy designed for teams that require sub-millisecond real-time synchronization across geographic regions.

Instead of routing real-time WebSockets through centralized database servers, DrawyParty utilizes PartyKit running directly on Cloudflare Workers. Each collaborative whiteboard room runs as an isolated, stateful edge micro-server located closest to the connected users, providing instant cursor presence and effortless concurrent drawing.

Key Technical Highlights

Section titled “Key Technical Highlights”
  • ⚡ Edge-Native WebSockets: Powered by Cloudflare Workers and PartyKit for lightning-fast broadcast of cursor positions and whiteboard strokes.
  • 🐘 Pooled PostgreSQL Persistence: Whiteboard snapshots and document versions persist reliably in PostgreSQL (compatible with Supabase, Neon, Tembo, or any connection-pooled Postgres).
  • 🧩 Optimistic CRDT Updates: Conflict-free concurrent drawing prevents conflicting element overrides when multiple teammates sketch simultaneously.
  • 🌐 Deploy Anywhere: Packaged with Nitro and TanStack Start for universal hosting across Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages.

Architecture: How PartyKit Powers DrawyParty

Section titled “Architecture: How PartyKit Powers DrawyParty”

Traditional real-time web whiteboards face latency challenges when collaborators are distributed across different continents:

[User A (Europe)] ──> [Cloudflare Edge PartyKit Room (Frankfurt)] <── [User B (Europe)]
                                   │
                                   ▼ (Async Snapshot Sync)
                        [PostgreSQL Database]
  1. Stateful Rooms: When a user creates or joins a whiteboard, PartyKit automatically provisions a stateful WebSocket room on Cloudflare’s nearest edge node.
  2. Instant Broadcast: Drawing events and cursor coordinates broadcast immediately between peer connections without database write bottlenecks.
  3. Durable Persistence: Board states are asynchronously saved to pooled PostgreSQL for permanent document storage and retrieval.

Quickstart & Deployment

Section titled “Quickstart & Deployment”

1. One-Click Cloud Deployment

Section titled “1. One-Click Cloud Deployment”

Deploy DrawyParty directly to Vercel:

Deploy with Vercel

2. Local Development

Section titled “2. Local Development”

Clone the repository and set up your local development environment:

Terminal window
git clone https://github.com/Pratyay360/drawy-party.git
cd drawy-party


# Install dependencies using mise or npm
npm install

3. Environment Variables

Section titled “3. Environment Variables”

Create your .env file from .env.example:

Terminal window
cp .env.example .env

Configure your PartyKit room host and PostgreSQL connection string:

DATABASE_URL="postgres://user:password@host:5432/drawyparty?sslmode=require"
VITE_PARTYKIT_HOST="127.0.0.1:1999"

Start the local server and PartyKit development daemon:

Terminal window
npm run dev

Compare Drawy Editions

Section titled “Compare Drawy Editions”
Edition Realtime Engine Data Storage Ideal Deployment
Drawy Supabase Realtime Supabase PostgreSQL Full-stack teams on Vercel + Supabase
DrawyParty Cloudflare PartyKit Pooled PostgreSQL Low-latency global edge collaboration
DrawX Local Native Runtime Local Filesystem Air-gapped, 100% private offline sketching