Introduction

Orbital is a Go-based platform for building real‑time, event‑driven applications. It is composed of small services (auth, core, games, payments, streams, etc.) connected over NATS and exposed via HTTP APIs.

At a high level Orbital gives you:

• Passwordless authentication using WebAuthn/passkeys
• HTTP and SSE APIs for game and consumer traffic
• Durable event streams over NATS JetStream
• PostgreSQL‑backed persistence with OpenTelemetry instrumentation

You interact with Orbital in three main ways:

• HTTP APIs – service endpoints under /api/*
• CLI – the orbital binary for local dev, bootstrap, and admin tasks
• NATS/Streams – for real‑time and background workflows

Next steps

• Set up a local stack: see the project README and docker compose in the repo
• Learn how authentication and bootstrap work: Authentication
• Use the CLI for bootstrap and day‑to‑day operations: CLI Reference
• Stream events to clients: Durable Streams
• Integrate game logic: Gaming Integration