I’m building a chat-first community app that uses Bluesky’s AT Protocol for identity.

Current architecture: - Electron client - Spring Boot backend (monolith) - REST for servers/channels - Planning WebSocket-based messaging

As a solo builder, I’m trying to balance simplicity with future scalability.

At what point would you introduce: - a separate WebSocket gateway - pub/sub (Redis, etc.) - or keep everything in one Spring app until it breaks?

Curious how others approached real-time chat systems early on.

Project for context: https://github.com/JohannaWeb/ProjectFalcon