lila-server

Effect v4 HTTP API for a lichess-style chess scaffold, serving game state, legal moves, and Stockfish analysis.

Overview

lila-server is the backend for the chess scaffold used as the testbed for the Effect v4 migration in this monorepo. It exposes an HTTP API for creating games, validating moves via chess.js, persisting game state and events to Postgres, and requesting Stockfish (wasm) engine analysis or computer moves. It pairs with apps/lila-web (the Next.js play page) but has no UI of its own.

Status: scaffold. Hot-seat and vs-computer play work end-to-end, but there is no realtime push between browsers and no auth — player IDs are hard-coded.

Stack

Effect v4 (effect, @effect/platform-node) for the HTTP server and service layer
@repo/chess-domain — branded IDs, Schema types, tagged errors, events
@repo/chess-services — GameService (rules + persistence) and EngineService (Stockfish)
@repo/realtime — in-process EventBus (PubSub) for game events
@repo/telemetry for observability
Runs via tsx (no separate build/bundle step)

Develop

# from repo root, after local Postgres + migrations are set up
pnpm --filter lila-server dev      # tsx --watch, serves on :3030

# other scripts
pnpm --filter lila-server lint
pnpm --filter lila-server check-types

Requires apps/lila-server/.env (see the app README for the full local Postgres + Supabase setup):

PORT=3030
CORS_ORIGINS=http://localhost:3031
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:postgres@127.0.0.1:54322/postgres

Test

pnpm --filter lila-server test      # vitest
pnpm --filter lila-server test:ci   # vitest run + junit report

Build & deploy

There is no separate build step — dev and start both run the TypeScript source directly via tsx (start runs node --import tsx src/main.ts).

Deploy target: Internal / not separately deployed.

Structure

src/main.ts — HTTP server entry point (/health, /games, /games/:id, /games/:id/legal-moves, /games/:id/moves, /games/:id/computer-move)
Depends on workspace packages @repo/chess-domain, @repo/chess-services, @repo/realtime for domain logic, rules/persistence, and the event bus
Chess schema (chess_games, chess_game_events) lives in packages/db/src/schema/chess.ts

See the apps overview and the monorepo overview.