Foundations of Distributed Systems Safety
This day launches the distsys-safety phase by establishing core safety properties that every production AI system must enforce when components span multiple nodes or services. It sets the measurement baseline for later days that will apply these properties to Maku's actual rate-limiting and API code. Understanding these invariants early prevents subtle consistency and availability failures that only surface under load.
Resources
- 25 min
- 15 min
Deliverable
Journal entry titled 'Day 148 Safety Invariants' listing three safety properties observed in app/api/maku/brief/route.ts plus one open question about their violation under partition
Quiz · 2 questions
1. Which safety property is violated when a rate-limiter returns different decisions to two clients that sent identical requests within the same window?
2. Name one concrete failure mode that can occur in a distributed rate limiter when the system experiences a network partition.