Ably through Squiid

What Ably is

Ably is realtime infrastructure with stronger guarantees than a plain websocket service. Messages are ordered and delivered exactly once per connection, a client that drops offline can resume from where it left off rather than losing everything in the gap, history lets a late joiner fetch recent messages, and presence tracks membership with enter and leave events. It also integrates with queues and third-party systems through its integrations layer. Ably also publishes its uptime and latency targets, which is the sort of commitment that matters when realtime is part of a paid feature.

Those guarantees matter for AI-coded products more than they first appear. A collaborative editor, a live order book, a multiplayer game state, or a stream of tokens from a model all break in confusing ways when messages arrive out of order or vanish during a tunnel. Building that reliability on top of raw websockets is a project in itself. Rewind lets a new subscriber start from a point in the recent past, which makes a late-loading dashboard consistent with the ones already open.

Why connect it through Squiid

Ably is on the Squiid roadmap. When it lands, Squiid will provision the app, hold the API key and route calls through https://api.squiid.io/v1/ably/... with Authorization: Bearer $SQUIID_API_KEY, with official SDKs working by base URL swap (gateway convention). Messages, connection minutes and plan cost will bill at Ably's listed price on one Squiid invoice. Token authentication for browser clients is issued server side through the gateway, so the root key stays with Squiid. Channel minutes are the unit to watch, since an idle channel with subscribers still counts as active.

• One account, one key, one bill, one dashboard. Ably sits beside every other service your project uses, on the same invoice and the same credit balance.
• Key custody. Squiid holds the Ably credentials. Your code carries SQUIID_API_KEY, so ABLY_API_KEY, ABLY_CLIENT_ID never land in a repository, a preview deployment or an agent’s context.
• Metering you can see. Every call is counted per service and per day, so you know what Ably costs before the month ends.
• Pause on zero. When prepaid credits run out the gateway stops authorizing usage instead of running up a bill you did not fund.
• One rotation. Rotating the Squiid key cuts off every agent, worker and deployment at once, with no provider key to hunt down.

What you get

• A provisioned Ably app with the key held by Squiid
• Ordered delivery with connection recovery
• Message history and presence
• Token auth for browser clients
• Ably list pricing, no markup

How to connect Ably

One variable replaces the provider credentials this service would normally need. Requests go to the gateway and the official SDKs work by pointing their base URL at it (gateway convention).

# .env
# replaces ABLY_API_KEY, ABLY_CLIENT_ID
SQUIID_API_KEY=sq_live_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

# every request: https://api.squiid.io/v1/ably/...
# header:       Authorization: Bearer $SQUIID_API_KEY

Pricing through Squiid

Ably charges by messages, peak connections and channel minutes on plan tiers, at the provider's listed price. Squiid passes that through at par: one dollar of prepaid credit is one dollar of Ably usage, with no markup and no per-request margin.

Ably has no subscription attached on Squiid today. If a plan is required for a feature you need, it passes through at the provider’s listed price with no Squiid fee.

Squiid adds no markup to provider prices. There is a free plan at $0 a month with a 15% fee when you top up credits, Solo at $19.97 a month with a top-up fee that starts at 8% and falls to 3.5% as your spend grows, Team from $29.97 a seat a month with the same ladder one point lower, and Custom with a rate of 3% or less. Credits are prepaid, so Ably usage stops when the balance reaches zero rather than producing an invoice you did not fund. Auto top-up with a cap keeps production running without handing anyone an open-ended card.

If you leave

Export: channels, keys and delivery configuration are re-created in your own Ably account from the documented setup. Squiid never owns your code, your schema or your domain, and the gateway speaks Ably's own API, so the client change is a base URL. The handover page lists what happens for every provider in the catalogue.

Works with every coding agent

Ably through Squiid is just an HTTP call with a bearer token, so every agentic coding tool can use it with the single key already in your environment:

• Claude Code
• Cursor
• ChatGPT
• Codex
• Grok
• Gemini CLI
• GitHub Copilot
• Windsurf
• Perplexity
• Devin
• Replit
• v0
• Lovable
• Cline

Vibe coding a feature on Ably usually means asking for it in plain language and letting the agent write the integration. Because the key is Squiid’s rather than the provider’s, it can do that without ever holding a credential that could be leaked, logged or committed.