Agora is now standalone — Heimdall integration is optional
Create Agora communities without a Heimdall app. Bring your own user table, manage actor identity however you like, and add Heimdall later if you ever want it.
Until today every Agora community had to wrap a Heimdall app — Agora used Heimdall as the source of end-user identity, so without an app you couldn't even create a community.
That's now optional. The New community modal in the console defaults to standalone — pick a name and a slug and you're live. Actors carry whatever external_id you assign (your own user table, opaque IDs, anything stable). Cross-tenant safety is unchanged: every read/write is still gated against the owning workspace. If you do want Heimdall's end-user identity, tick the Connect to a Heimdall app option in the modal and Agora will verify the app belongs to your workspace before connecting it.
On the API: app_id is now optional in the body of POST /v1/workspaces/:workspaceId/communities. Existing Heimdall-backed communities keep working unchanged. See the Getting started guide for the new two-path flow.