Midnight Insomnia
Where night owls meet after midnight
Most chat apps are always on and generic. Midnight Insomnia needed a distinct community mechanic — scarcity by time — without sacrificing real-time reliability, abuse resistance, or trust around auth, billing, and account lifecycle.
A production-grade full-stack platform.
Midnight Insomnia is a Kotlin Multiplatform social chat app built around a simple constraint: the room only opens between 00:00 and 04:59 in the user's local timezone, with the server as the authority on access. Outside those hours, users see a countdown, can opt into a midnight reminder, and return when the room opens. Inside the room, users chat in real time over WebSockets in a single ephemeral global channel with profiles, stats, achievements, reactions, and optional premium upgrades.
We built an end-to-end Kotlin Multiplatform product: shared Compose UI for Android and iOS, a Ktor WebSocket backend, MongoDB for user and stats persistence, and Firebase for authentication and remote config. Chat is WebSocket-first with server-enforced midnight gating, ephemeral in-memory messages, rate limiting, and server-verified premium entitlements.
What makes it work in the real world.
- →Midnight-only chat window with countdown and reminder UX
- →Real-time global room with ephemeral WebSocket messages
- →Profiles, streaks, achievements, and emoji reactions
- →Premium upgrades for custom names, avatars, and longer messages
- →Blocking, rate limiting, and account deletion flows
Built for real operations, not demos.
Kotlin Multiplatform with shared Compose UI for Android and iOS
Ktor WebSocket backend with server-enforced midnight access gating
MongoDB for profiles, stats, and achievements; ephemeral in-memory chat
Firebase Auth with Google, Apple, and guest sign-in
Production deployment on Golub Softworks infrastructure
How we made it work reliably in production.
- Kotlin Multiplatform with shared Compose UI for Android and iOS
- Ktor WebSocket backend with server-enforced midnight access gating
- MongoDB for profiles, stats, and achievements; ephemeral in-memory chat
- Firebase Auth with Google, Apple, and guest sign-in
- Production deployment on Golub Softworks infrastructure
Building something that needs to actually work in the real world?
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