OPENSIDE

Openside is an open-source, self-hostable recording studio - capture high-quality meetings, podcasts, and screen recordings with multi-track, per-participant recording, then finalize them into clean, downloadable video.

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Features

• Studio-quality recording - crisp video up to 4K with clear, high-quality audio
• Multi-track, per-participant output - each speaker on their own track, ready to edit
• Screen recorder - quick standalone screen and camera capture, share it with a link
• Shareable recordings - share any recording from your projects with a link
• Export in any format - download your recordings as MP4, WebM, MP3, or WAV
• Cheaper than SaaS - no per-seat fees, pay only for the infra you use
• Use it for free - connect your own LiveKit and storage in settings to unlock unlimited, watermark-free recording at no cost beyond your own usage
• Open source & self-hostable - MIT licensed, no vendor lock-in

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Architecture

Openside is two apps, three deployable processes - a frontend, an API server, and a media worker (the API and worker share the same core codebase, run as separate processes).

flowchart LR
    W[Browser · web app] -->|REST + WebSocket| API[core · Express API]
    W <-->|realtime room| LK[LiveKit]
    W <-->|upload chunks / download recordings| R2[(Cloudflare R2)]
    API -->|presigned upload/download URLs| W
    API --> DB[(PostgreSQL)]
    API -->|enqueue finalize/transcode| R[(Redis · BullMQ)]
    R --> WK[core · Media Worker]
    WK -->|ffmpeg finalize/transcode| WK
    WK <-->|read segments / write output| R2
    WK --> DB

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Piece	Folder	What it does
Web	web/	React 19 + Vite SPA. Recording UI, meeting rooms, dashboard, library.
API	core/ (src/index.ts)	Express server: auth, spaces, recording sessions, LiveKit tokens, billing, presigned downloads.
Worker	core/ (src/worker.ts)	BullMQ consumer running the heavy ffmpeg work - session finalization + on-demand transcodes - off the API.

The worker shares core's Prisma schema, queue definitions, and services with the API, so it's the same build, a different entrypoint - no separate repo needed. Scale it horizontally by running more worker instances.

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Tech Stack

Frontend - React 19 · Vite · TypeScript · Tailwind · TanStack Query · Framer Motion · LiveKit components · Clerk

Backend (core) - Node · Express 5 · TypeScript · Prisma 7 (PostgreSQL) · BullMQ + Redis · LiveKit Server SDK · ffmpeg-static · AWS S3 SDK (R2) · Socket.IO · Clerk · Nodemailer · Polar (billing)

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Getting Started (Local Dev)

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ and pnpm 10+ (corepack enable)
• PostgreSQL database
• Redis (required for the worker / media pipeline)
• A LiveKit project (cloud or self-hosted)
• A Cloudflare R2 bucket (S3-compatible) for output storage
• A Clerk application for auth

1. Clone & install

git clone https://github.com/rinkitadhana/openside.git
cd openside

# Backend + worker
cd core && pnpm install

# Frontend
cd web && pnpm install

2. Configure environment

Copy the example env files and fill in your own values:

cp core/.env.example core/.env.local
cp web/.env.example  web/.env.local

Each key is documented in the .env.example files. The app loads .env.local for local development and .env.production when hosted (NODE_ENV=production), so create a .env.production with your production values when deploying.

3. Set up the database

cd core
pnpm db:generate     # generate Prisma client
pnpm db:migrate      # apply migrations
pnpm db:seed         # optional: seed data

4. Run everything

# Terminal 1 - API server
cd core && pnpm dev

# Terminal 2 - media worker (needs REDIS_URL)
cd core && pnpm worker:dev

# Terminal 3 - frontend
cd web && pnpm dev

Open the Vite dev URL (default http://localhost:3000) and you're in.

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Contributing

Issues and PRs are always welcome. Before opening a PR, test your changes properly, and include screenshots plus the reasoning behind it so it's clear why the change is worth merging.

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License

Released under the MIT License. Free to use, modify, and self-host.