Architecture

Our Redis cache kept dropping TLS connections, taking down the entire caching layer. After a misleading benchmark nearly sent us in the wrong direction, we migrated to PostgreSQL — same performance, zero drops, one less service to manage.

How we secured inter-service communication with HMAC-SHA256 signed tokens that expire in 10 seconds — no session state, no API keys to rotate, no middleware databases to query.

Our monolithic Nuxt app kept crashing at the 2GB memory limit. We doubled to 4GB — twice the cost, same underlying problem. After five days of failed optimization attempts (streaming compression, Redis polling, SWR caching), we split the monolith into three standalone services. Each got its own 2GB allocation, total cost dropped, and the crashes stopped.

How replacing API response proxying with 307 redirects to signed CDN URLs eliminated origin bandwidth costs and removed an entire class of streaming bugs.

How we replaced slow key-iteration cache clearing with instant timestamp-based invalidation while preserving SWR performance.

A simple frontend-backend contract for datetime handling that prevents scheduling bugs across timezones and makes your app server-location independent.