# matryer/vice

Go channels at horizontal scale (powered by message queues)

Repository: https://github.com/matryer/vice
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/vice
Homepage: https://medium.com/@matryer/introducing-vice-go-channels-across-many-machines-bcac1147d7e2
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: golang, channels, queues, idiomatic
Last push: 2022-07-22T03:09:35+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3324, "days_push": 1503, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1539, forks 76 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:00.358541+00:00)

## What it is
Vice is a Go library that lets you use plain Go channels transparently over message queue technologies like NATS, Redis, NSQ, and Amazon SQS. It abstracts queue-specific APIs behind a swappable Transport interface so services can be written with idiomatic Go code and tested with an in-memory implementation.

## Use cases
- distribute Go channel communication across multiple machines
- write message-driven services without learning queue-specific APIs
- swap message queue backends without changing application code
- unit test services using in-memory channels with no queue dependencies
- build horizontally scalable workers that consume from queues via channels

## When to choose
- you want idiomatic Go channel semantics over a distributed message queue
- you need to switch between NATS, Redis, NSQ, or SQS transparently
- you value simple, testable service code over queue-specific features

## When to avoid
- you need advanced queue features like dead-letter queues, delayed delivery, or fine-grained delivery guarantees
- you need a library with frequent updates and active maintenance
- you are not using Go

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: maintenance
- function: message-queue, concurrency, streaming
- domain: microservices, backend, developer-tools
- platform: go, cross-platform
- tags: go-channels, message-queue-abstraction, nats, redis, nsq, amazon-sqs, transport-interface, messaging

## Member repositories
- matryer/vice (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:00.358541+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:30:54.635253+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/matryer/vice (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:00.358541+00:00, sha 9bbecfbf3f1f)
  - homepage: https://medium.com/@matryer/introducing-vice-go-channels-across-many-machines-bcac1147d7e2 (fetched 2026-08-29T11:32:25.085860+00:00, sha 3e5bccdb070f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.