# Cherry developer docs

Cherry lets you add real chat to your product, and drive it from your backend. There are two integration surfaces, designed to work together:

## Chat Embed SDK

A drop-in widget that renders Cherry chat inside your web app. Install one npm package, mount it onto a `<div>`, and your users are chatting. It handles wallet auth, theming, and realtime updates for you.

- **Package:** `@cherrydotfun/chat-embed-sdk`
- **Use it for:** putting a chat room (or a list of rooms) on your site, themed to match your brand.
- [Quickstart →](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs/quickstart.md)

> **Tip:** Want to see it first? Try the [live embed demo and theme builder](https://cherry.fun/chat-embed-example/), a no-signup, no-backend playground where you can switch themes, pick a display mode, and copy a ready-to-paste integration snippet.

## Cherry API

A REST API you call from **your backend** to manage chat programmatically: create rooms on the fly, send messages, and moderate members. It has two key types, each a single opaque token from the portal: a **project key** (`cherry_sk_`) for rooms and messages your project owns, and a **bot key** (`cherry_bot_`) for a named bot that acts with its own in-room identity (including [moderating rooms it's promoted in](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs/guides/moderation-bot.md)).

- **Base URL:** `https://api.cherry.fun/api/v1/apps` (project/Apps API) · `https://api.cherry.fun/api/v1/bots` (Bot API)
- **Use it for:** creating a room per game, match, order, or community automatically, then surfacing it in an embed.
- [Cherry API authentication →](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs/api/authentication.md)

## How they fit together

The two surfaces compose into the most common pattern: your backend **creates a room** with the Cherry API, and your frontend **embeds** it with the SDK.

For example, a game spins up a room per match: the server calls the Cherry API to create the room and add the players, then the web client mounts the embed pointed at that room. The same flow works for a marketplace order, a token-gated community, or a support thread.

## Where to go next

- New here? Start with the [Quickstart](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs/quickstart.md), a public chat embed in about five minutes.
- Building the full experience? The **Chat Embed SDK** and **Cherry API** sections cover authentication, theming, dynamic rooms, and the complete reference.

> **Tip:** Building with an AI coding assistant? Point it at our [`llms.txt`](https://portal.cherry.fun/llms.txt), a single plain-text file that indexes and links every page in these docs in a format LLMs read well. Paste the URL into your assistant (or let it fetch it) and it has the whole SDK and API at hand. See [For AI agents](https://portal.cherry.fun/docs/ai/for-ai-agents.md) for that plus ready-made integration skills.