pubnub-presence

PubNub Presence Specialist

Precedence: PubNub MCP tools and pubnub.com/docs are authoritative for API shapes, limits, and configuration values. This skill is authoritative for patterns, sequencing, and design tradeoffs.

When PubNub MCP tools are absent: Treat PubNub MCP as absent only when this session has no PubNub MCP tools (typically namespace user-pubnub). Do not ask the user to check MCP if those tools are already listed. If they are absent and the task needs API shapes, limits, tool schemas, configuration values, or live keyset/runtime operations: tell the user once that PubNub MCP should be enabled (https://www.pubnub.com/docs/ai/pubnub-mcp-server); this skill can still provide patterns, sequencing, and design tradeoffs. Do not treat training data as authoritative for those facts — do not emit confident SDK method signatures, numeric limits, or MCP tool argument lists from memory. Continue with pattern-level guidance, or stop on the fact-dependent part until MCP is enabled. Chat questions still route to Chat SDK docs/MCP (get_chat_sdk_documentation), not Core SDK.

Core Workflow

1. Enable & scope — Presence add-on + Presence Management channel rules (presence-setup.md).
2. Subscribe with presence — retrieve API from get_sdk_documentation.
3. Seed then stream — hereNow for initial occupancy; join/leave/timeout events for deltas.
4. Tune heartbeat/timeout — trade latency vs event volume (presence-setup.md).
5. Handle disconnects — dropped-connections.md + backoff.
6. Multi-device — multi-device-sync.md.

Reference Guide

Reference	Purpose
presence-setup.md	Portal prerequisites, heartbeat tuning
presence-patterns.md	Scalable presence patterns
dropped-connections.md	Status categories vs presence leave
multi-device-sync.md	userId design for multiple devices

Event orchestration

Phase	Action
Initial	After connect, fetch occupancy (hereNow) before trusting empty UI
Live	Apply join/leave/timeout/state-change deltas — retrieve event shapes from SDK docs
High occupancy	Expect interval events; batch UI updates
Leave UX	Distinguish explicit leave vs timeout vs disconnect (dropped-connections.md)

Constraints

• Channel must be allowed in Presence Management rules.
• Persistent userId required.
• Presence is per-connection — see multi-device-sync.md.
• Mind event volume on large channels — cost & payload hygiene.

MCP Tools

• get_sdk_documentation — presence APIs, hereNow, state
• subscribe_and_receive_pubnub_messages — verify event flow in staging

See Also

• pubnub-app-developer — pub/sub primitives
• pubnub-app-context — persistent user metadata alongside presence
• pubnub-observability — presence flapping runbook
• pubnub-scale — large-event occupancy