Distributed-Systems

Distributed counter synchronization diagram

Implementing Linearizable Counters with etcd's Transaction API

How to design and ship linearizable counters on etcd using the Transaction API, ModRevision guards, and watch-based retry loops.

Diagram of Yjs document state diverging and merging between two clients

Architecting CRDT-Based Collaboration with Yjs: Inside the Operational Transform Engine

A deep dive into Yjs’s CRDT architecture and operational transform engine — the data structures, conflict resolution rules, and patterns that make collaborative editing feel instant.

Abstract diagram of encrypted message envelopes flowing from a sender through a notification gateway to multiple recipient devices.

Implementing End-to-End Encrypted Push Notifications with Signal and MLS

A practical guide to delivering push notifications that the server cannot read, covering Signal’s Double Ratchet, MLS group state, APNs/FCM payload constraints, and the tradeoffs you’ll hit in production.

Diagram of NATS JetStream stream replication across three nodes

Inside NATS JetStream: Building Exactly-Once Delivery with Replicated Logs and Consumer Acks

A deep dive into the architecture behind JetStream’s exactly-once semantics — covering Raft-replicated streams, per-consumer ack tracking, redelivery semantics, and the dedup window that ties it all together.

Diagram of disaggregated LLM serving with a shared KV cache pool across prefill and decode nodes.

Mooncake: Turning KV Cache into a Distributed LLM Serving Layer

Mooncake reframes KV cache as a first-class distributed resource. This post walks through its architecture, the KV store design, and why prefilling and decoding benefit so differently from cache disaggregation.