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Concepts

Sessions

Presenter-run, real-time engagement on a shared screen.

A session is a live event: a presenter runs it from the dashboard, the audience joins from their phones with a short join code, and results update in real time on the big screen.

Live or self-paced

A session runs in one of two modes:

  • Live — the host drives the room, opening one activity ("moment") at a time. Each moment moves through stagedliveclosed as the host advances it.
  • Self-paced — an open link the audience can work through on their own schedule, optionally bounded by an opens-at/closes-at window.

Real-time delivery

Session state, presence, and live tallies are pushed over a separate real-time tier (Socket.IO, backed by Redis pub/sub) rather than the main app server. That keeps the presenter's control panel, the participant view, and the big-screen display all in sync as responses come in, and lets the real-time tier scale independently for larger rooms.

Three views, one session

  • Host controls — start the session, stage and launch activities, monitor responses.
  • Participant view — join by code on a phone, answer the current activity.
  • Big-screen / present view — the shared display the room watches, showing live results as they update.

Same activities as forms

A session is built from activities — polls, word clouds, Q&A, and more — the same primitives async forms use, just delivered live instead of collected over time.

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