#Backend
18 articles — newest first.
- 8 min read
Unifying Twitch and YouTube Live Chat: Ordered, De-duplicated
Build a single, ordered, de-duplicated event stream from Twitch IRC and YouTube Live Chat with Hybrid Logical Clocks, watermarks, and idempotent delivery.
- 8 min read
On-Device Twitch IRC in Rust: Reconnect State Machine + Backoff
Build a fully local Twitch chat ingestor in Rust with a resilient WebSocket reconnect loop, exponential backoff with jitter, and a pragmatic state machine that survives flaky networks.
- 7 min read
Serverless local-first settings sync over LAN with Automerge + mDNS
Replicate user settings across devices on the same LAN without servers by combining Automerge CRDT sync messages with mDNS peer discovery and a tiny TCP transport.
- 8 min read
Zero-Account Auth: Device-Bound Identity + Capability Tokens
Build secure apps without accounts or an auth server: bind identity to device keys, mint PASETO capability tokens, and enforce DPoP for stateless, least-privilege access.
- 7 min read
Kill Async Deadlocks in Tauri with Tokio Task Dumps + Tracing
A field guide to diagnosing and terminating async deadlocks in production Tauri apps using Tokio task dumps, tokio-console, and end-to-end tracing spans.
- 7 min read
Shrink streamerOS Rust binaries: opt=z, fat LTO, panic=abort
A practical, measured look at how opt-level=z, fat LTO, and panic=abort shrink Rust binaries for production systems like streamerOS—and the trade-offs.
- 7 min read
Rust structured concurrency: cap media decoders w/ tokio JoinSet
Use tokio JoinSet and semaphores to bound parallel media decoders, enforce backpressure, and build cancellation-safe ffmpeg workers with structured concurrency.
- 6 min read
serde_json to simd-json in streamerOS IPC: hot-path deserialization
We replaced serde_json with simd-json in streamerOS’s IPC layer and benchmarked the deserialize hot path, showing where SIMD wins and where it doesn’t.
- 7 min read
Tauri Rust Backpressure: Bounded vs Unbounded Channels for Chat Floods
Design a Tauri Rust core that survives chat floods without memory blowups using bounded channels, drop-oldest semantics, and time-based batching.
- 7 min read
Zero-copy Twitch IRC parsing in Rust with Bytes + nom at 5k/s
Build a zero-copy Twitch IRC parser in Rust using bytes::Bytes and nom to sustain 5,000+ messages/sec without heap churn or unnecessary allocations.
- 8 min read
Redis Caching Strategies That Don't Serve Stale Data
On a busy portal I learned Redis caching strategies live or die on details: one interceptor boundary, cache-aside vs write-through, TTL jitter, stampede guards.
- 8 min read
WebSocket Telemetry at Scale: Real-Time Streaming Architectures
A single WebSocket server is a weekend project; streaming to thousands across instances is architecture. Redis pub/sub backplanes, room-scoped subscriptions, and source-side coalescing.
- 7 min read
MongoDB Aggregation Pipelines: Stage Order Is the Win
Profiling a clinical workflow API taught me MongoDB aggregation lives or dies on stage order: $match first on indexes, $lookup treated as the join it is, then read explain.
- 7 min read
Role-Based Access Control Patterns for Node.js APIs
Authorization bugs don't crash — they let the wrong person succeed. Enforcing RBAC at the middleware layer with JWT claims, fine-grained permissions, and deny-by-default.
- 9 min read
Caching the AI: Slashing LLM Latency with Redis & MongoDB
AI APIs are the slowest hop in your stack. How exact + semantic Redis caching and optimized MongoDB indexing hold 99.9% uptime and cut latency 25% under real load.
- 8 min read
The Death of the Traditional Backend Router
Modern backends are evolving from rigid URL endpoints to intent-driven AI routers. How LLM dispatch replaces sprawling switch statements — and where deterministic code still wins.
- 7 min read
Vector Foundations: How Semantic Search Actually Works
Keyword search asks 'does this string appear?' Semantic search asks 'does this mean the same thing?' Embeddings turn meaning into geometry — and chunking, not model choice, usually decides retrieval quality.
- 7 min read
The AI-Native Dev Stack: Rethinking MERN for Production AI
MERN didn't die — it grew a nervous system. The AI-native stack keeps Mongo, Express, React and Node but adds three new tiers — vector memory, a model gateway, and an orchestration loop — that change every architectural assumption.