the apparat tools for demoparties

When Evoke switched its party system from Partymeister to Granola, we needed a way to handle the operational “side quests” that Granola intentionally (and rightfully) leaves out.

Instead of building a new monolith, I developed the Apparat suite: a set of small, decoupled, single-purpose tools. They were successfully battle-tested in production at Evoke this August, so here is a quick look in case they are useful for your own events.

• kasseapparat
  A lightweight POS and guestlist manager for the entrance desk to handle check-ins and door sales.

• tidsapparat
  A timetable manager to adjust running orders on the fly and serve structured schedule data.

• funkapparat
  A minimal news hub for quick text announcements (e.g., deadline shifts, pizza arrivals).

• billedapparat
  A big-screen display system for the main hall. It rotates slides and sponsor banners while directly pulling live schedules from tidsapparat and announcements from funkapparat.

Under the Hood & Open Source

All four tools share the same technical foundation:

• Stack: Go backends paired with React admin interfaces.
• Deployment: Shipped as ready-to-run Docker containers for easy local hosting on party hardware.
• Authentication: Kept simple by offloading it entirely. Access control is meant to be handled externally via OIDC or a reverse proxy/sidecar like Traefik.
• Open Source: Built for Evoke, but free to use for any demoparty.

If you want to give them a spin, check out the repositories. Issues and pull requests are always welcome!

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