| name | moq |
| description | Build live video, audio, and real-time data apps with Media over QUIC (MoQ). Use when adding live streaming, conferencing, voice AI, or real-time pub/sub to an app; when integrating the @moq/* npm packages, moq-* Rust crates, or the Python/Kotlin/Swift/Go/C bindings; or when running a moq-relay server or a gateway (RTMP, SRT, WebRTC, HLS, OBS, GStreamer, ffmpeg). |
Media over QUIC (MoQ)
MoQ is a live media protocol delivering real-time (sub-second) latency at CDN scale.
It is generic pub/sub over QUIC: video and audio are the flagship use case, but any live data rides the same relays (chat, game input, JSON state, AI output).
This skill is an index of the moq-dev monorepo (https://github.com/moq-dev/moq): what you can build and which pieces to reach for. Fetch the linked docs for details instead of guessing APIs.
Layering
The stack from the wire up. Reach for the highest layer that fits and drop down only when you need control:
- QUIC: does all the networking. Provided by the browser or a QUIC library (
moq-native configures one for you in Rust).
- WebTransport: a thin layer over QUIC/HTTP3 so browsers can speak it. Provided by the browser or the
web-transport crates.
- moq-lite (Rust
moq-net, TypeScript @moq/net): generic real-time pub/sub. A broadcast contains named tracks; tracks carry groups of frames. Relays cache, deduplicate, and fan out without understanding the payload, so anything can be end-to-end encrypted. This is the layer CDNs implement.
- hang (Rust
hang, TypeScript @moq/hang): media on top. A catalog track describes codecs/renditions; containers carry timestamped codec bitstream. Think of hang as HLS/DASH and moq-lite as HTTP.
- Your application: business logic, auth, custom tracks. Extend hang with your own tracks or replace it entirely.
Everything below builds on these layers.
What you can build
Live streaming (Twitch-style). Ingest via the OBS plugin (cpp/obs), RTMP (rs/moq-rtmp), SRT (rs/moq-srt), GStreamer (rs/moq-gst), or pipe ffmpeg into the moq CLI (rs/moq-cli, a media router bridging fMP4/CMAF, MPEG-TS, FLV, HLS, RTMP, SRT, WebRTC). Distribute through moq-relay and watch in the browser with <moq-watch> (@moq/watch). Serve legacy players via the HLS/LL-HLS gateway (rs/moq-hls) and build a rendition ladder with just-in-time transcoding (rs/moq-transcode). Docs: https://doc.moq.dev/bin/
Conferencing (Zoom-style). Browser capture and playback with @moq/publish + @moq/watch; each participant is a broadcast, discovered via announcements. Bridge existing WebRTC clients with the WHIP/WHEP gateway (rs/moq-rtc). Why MoQ over WebRTC: https://doc.moq.dev/concept/use-case/conferencing
Voice/video AI agents. Server-side media without a browser, straight from Rust: moq-mux publishes and decodes media containers (fMP4/CMAF, MPEG-TS, FLV), while rs/moq-video and rs/moq-audio capture/encode and decode/render with hardware codecs (VideoToolbox, D3D11, NVENC, VAAPI). Python bindings fit ML stacks, and the Pipecat voice-agent framework ships MoQ transport support (https://github.com/pipecat-ai/pipecat). TTS output written faster than real-time plays smoothly via @moq/watch buffered playback (latency-max). Background: https://moq.dev/blog/webrtc-is-the-problem and https://doc.moq.dev/concept/use-case/ai
Real-time data, no media at all. Chat, multiplayer game state, telemetry, collaborative apps: publish raw tracks with @moq/net or moq-net. Helpers: moq-json / @moq/json (JSON snapshots, merge-patch deltas, append logs) and moq-flate / @moq/flate (compression). A synchronized-clock example lives in js/clock. Same relays, same auth as media. Rule of thumb: anything that can be delta encoded or dropped when stale is a good fit for MoQ.
Interactive streams and teleoperation. Combine both directions: media down, input tracks up. MoQ Boy (rs/moq-boy, demo/boy) is a crowd-controlled Game Boy doing exactly this: https://moq.dev/blog/moq-boy. The same shape covers flying drones, controlling robots, and remote vehicle operation; some companies start from MoQ Boy and replace the emulator with a robot.
Cloud gaming / remote desktop. Screen capture and low-latency hardware encoding via rs/moq-video (camera and display sources on macOS/Windows/Linux, plus window capture), sub-100ms playback in the browser.
Native and mobile apps. One Rust core (rs/moq-ffi) with idiomatic bindings: Python (asyncio), Kotlin (coroutines/Flow, Android), Swift (async sequences, iOS/macOS), Go, and C (rs/libmoq for C/C++ build systems). Index: https://doc.moq.dev/lib/
Global delivery, hosted or self-hosted. Don't want to run infrastructure? https://moq.pro offers most of these libraries behind an API and a global CDN, with more CDN providers to come; moq-lite is also forwards-compatible with IETF moq-transport, so it runs over third-party CDNs like Cloudflare (https://moq.dev/blog/first-cdn). To self-host: moq-relay clusters across regions (https://doc.moq.dev/bin/relay/cluster), authenticates with path-scoped JWTs (moq-token, https://doc.moq.dev/bin/relay/auth), and exposes live traffic stats as MoQ tracks (rs/moq-stats). Load-test with rs/moq-bench. Native apps can also connect P2P via Iroh.
Web playback/capture on any site. <moq-watch> and <moq-publish> are plain web components with optional UI overlays; embeddable with no build step. Docs: https://doc.moq.dev/lib/js/@moq/watch and https://doc.moq.dev/lib/js/@moq/publish
Repo map
rs/ Rust: moq-net (pub/sub), hang (media), moq-relay, moq-cli (installs a moq binary), moq-native (QUIC/TLS setup), moq-mux (container muxing), moq-token[-cli] (auth), gateways (moq-rtmp, moq-srt, moq-rtc, moq-hls), native codecs (moq-video, moq-audio, moq-nvenc), moq-ffi/libmoq (bindings core).js/ TypeScript, published as @moq/*: net, hang, watch, publish, token, json, signals.py/, swift/, kt/, go/ bindings; cpp/obs OBS plugin; demo/ runnable demos.
Getting started
- Every client connects to a relay URL; the path scopes auth and broadcast names append to it. Public dev relay:
https://cdn.moq.dev/anon (unauthenticated, testing only, pick a unique name). Hosted production relays: https://moq.pro. Local: cargo install moq-relay, or clone the repo and nix develop -c just to run a relay, demo media, and web UI together.
- Media broadcast names end in
.hang (selects the hang catalog; .msf selects the IETF MSF format).
- Browsers need WebTransport (Chrome/Edge; Firefox/Safari experimental) and, outside localhost, a real TLS certificate.
- Auth is a JWT in the
?jwt= query parameter, signed by moq-token.
Reference
