Add Presence API announcement, docs, and changelog

[adityaoberai]

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[appwrite]

Appwrite Website

Project ID: 69d7efb00023389e8d27

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Website (appwrite/website)

Project ID: 684969cb000a2f6c0a02

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[greptile-apps]

Greptile Summary

This PR introduces the Appwrite Presence API by adding an announcement blog post, a changelog entry, a full Realtime reference page, an auth-product guide, and an update to the channels reference table.

• The docs/apis/realtime/presence reference is the largest new file; it documents all CRUD operations across 14 SDKs and includes subscribe examples and a channel table. It contains a claim (line 32) that presence records are automatically cleaned up when the Realtime connection closes, but no API mechanism or code is provided to tie a REST-written presence to a WebSocket session — developers who skip the heartbeat pattern based on this claim will see stale indicators.
• The docs/products/auth/presence guide's heartbeat section calls presences.update() without expiresAt, which does not advance the expiry timestamp despite the accompanying text saying that is the goal.
• Several subscribe examples in the Flutter, Apple, and Android SDK tabs check for bare event strings (presences.update, presences.delete) instead of the wildcard form (presences.*.update, presences.*.delete) used by the web example and the auth guide, making those handlers silently unreachable.

Confidence Score: 3/5

The reference page and auth guide contain multiple places where copying the provided snippets produces broken behavior, making this risky to publish as-is.

The 'while connected' cleanup claim describes a mechanism with no supporting API or code, the heartbeat example calls update() without expiresAt so the record never slides forward, and subscribe handlers in three SDK tabs use event strings that will never match any real event.

docs/apis/realtime/presence/+page.markdoc and docs/products/auth/presence/+page.markdoc need the most attention; the blog post and changelog are largely cosmetic.

Important Files Changed

Filename	Overview
src/routes/docs/apis/realtime/presence/+page.markdoc	New 1,595-line reference doc for the Presence API; contains a misleading claim about automatic presence cleanup on Realtime disconnect, and subscribe examples in non-web SDK tabs use bare event names without the required .* wildcard.
src/routes/blog/post/announcing-presence-api/+page.markdoc	New announcement blog post; subscribe example correctly uses presences.*.delete wildcard form, but all upsert snippets pass ID.unique() inline, encouraging a new presence record on every heartbeat call.
src/routes/docs/products/auth/presence/+page.markdoc	New auth-product presence guide; the heartbeat section explicitly aims to push expiresAt forward but calls presences.update() without an expiresAt argument, which leaves the timestamp unchanged.
src/routes/changelog/(entries)/2026-05-20.markdoc	New changelog entry; references cover image as .avif while the blog post uses .png for the same path — one of the two images will 404.
src/routes/docs/apis/realtime/channels/+page.markdoc	Adds presences and presences.<ID> rows to the channels table; both rows now correctly list all four event types (create, upsert, update, delete).
src/routes/docs/products/auth/+page.markdoc	Adds a Presence card to the Auth product index; description and link are correct.
.gitignore	Adds SKILL.md and AGENTS.md to gitignore; straightforward and correct.

_{Reviews (10): Last reviewed commit: "Update src/routes/docs/apis/realtime/pre..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[adityaoberai]

@ArnabChatterjee20k I'm still working on some more updates, will ping on Discord once ready

[greptile-apps]

Heartbeat use case uses update(), which won't slide expiresAt forward

Line 92 says the heartbeat timer's goal is "to push the expiresAt forward," but setStatus calls presences.update() without passing expiresAt. The reference docs explicitly describe the heartbeat pattern as using upsert() to slide expiresAt forward. An update() call that omits expiresAt leaves the original timestamp unchanged, so presences will still expire despite an active heartbeat loop. Either replace presences.update() with presences.upsert(), or explicitly pass an updated expiresAt value.

[greptile-apps]

"While connected" cleanup is undocumented and likely incorrect

Line 32 claims "If you keep a Realtime connection open, presence written over that connection is cleaned up automatically when the connection closes." However, all presence write operations in every code example use the Presences REST service — not the WebSocket. The Appwrite Realtime SDK is a subscriber-only mechanism; there is no API shown (no connection-id parameter, no opt-in flag) for tying a REST-written presence record to a WebSocket session's lifetime. A developer who relies on this "auto-cleanup on disconnect" behavior and skips the heartbeat/TTL pattern will find their presence records surviving tab close or network drop unchanged, leaving stale "online" indicators until the default expiresAt elapses. Either the mechanism that links a presence record to a connection needs to be described with working code, or this bullet should be removed and only the heartbeat pattern documented.