Realm
Realm is the server side of the Nimi ecosystem. It is where shared world truth lives: accounts and identity, friendships, chat, money, worlds, and the characters in them. Nimi does not re-implement any of that locally — it connects to Realm through the SDK and plays by Realm's rules.
The split of labor is simple. Runtime executes AI work. The SDK gives apps a safe way to reach Realm. Desktop and Web render the experience. The shared truth of a world stays in Realm; Nimi code only ever works with the typed view it receives.
What This Section Contains
Realm consumer entry points:
- Realm Truth Boundary — what Nimi does and does not own when consuming external Realm truth.
- Realm Consumer Projection — how Nimi consumers receive Realm API output through the SDK boundary.
- World State — what the current state of a world is and how it changes.
- World History — the append-only record of what happened in a world.
Domain reading map:
- Chat — how conversation participates in Realm-backed meaning.
- Social And Economy — relationship and value-flow concepts consumed from Realm.
- Asset And Binding — how app readers discuss world contents and attachments.
- Transit — continuity concepts for movement between worlds.
Creator and app surfaces:
- Creator Economy — creator economy and settlement concepts.
- App Interconnect — patterns for app-side Realm consumption.
For the side-by-side comparison of state vs history, see Platform → Worlds → State vs History. The cross-domain Glossary explains "world," "truth," and "world history" if those terms are unfamiliar.
Why Realm Matters To Nimi Apps
A Nimi app can live in many places: Desktop, Web, Avatar, creator tools, or an extension app built for one specific world. Each surface may show things differently, but none of them get to invent shared truth on their own. They all read Realm through generated SDK clients with typed wrappers.
If Realm data cannot be fetched, authenticated, or decoded, or it no longer matches what the app last saw, the app has to say so — with a typed unavailable or error state the user can see. It must never fake a successful read.
Reader Scenario: An App Reads Realm Data
- App requests Realm data. The app calls through the SDK Realm facade.
- SDK uses generated Realm core. The request shape comes from the configured external Realm OpenAPI input.
- Realm responds. The external Realm authority owns the server/domain truth.
- Nimi projects the result. Runtime, Desktop, Web, or app code may cache or present the output, but cannot make it canonical truth.
- Failures stay typed. Missing token, endpoint, API drift, or unavailable Realm output fails closed instead of being synthesized locally.