the lab a system you can break
asimali.me

Interactive

Break my backend.

This is the same architecture from the front page, wired up and actually running. Turn up the traffic, starve the cache, slow the model down, kill something mid-flight. Poke it however you like and watch how the design responds. If you find a way to genuinely take it down, tell me which one .

Fig. 1 · a generic backend, under your control live
steady state
API tierwhere a request lands first
Cachefast path for reads; a miss falls through to the store
Modelsits behind a breaker, fallback path drawn alongside
Queue + workersasync path; workers drain what the queue is holding
Responsewhat the caller is waiting on
Job waithow long queued work sits before a worker gets to it
served0/s
queue0
workers4
response0ms
job wait0ms
in model0
queue depth · last 60s shed 0 · requeued 0
event log 0 events
controls running
Traffic
Workers

A queue turns a latency problem into a capacity problem. More workers is more capacity.

Cache

Off, and every read pays a trip to the store instead.

Model

A slow dependency is worse than a dead one. The breaker turns slow into fast-and-degraded, on purpose.

Break something
live 0/s served 0queue 0ms response 0ms job wait ↑ diagram

Or skip ahead

Pick a scenario

six things worth seeing · each card sets the controls above and tells you what to watch

watch

Pick a scenario above. The caption under the diagram narrates what the system is doing; the numbers underneath say what it is costing.

This is a model, not a benchmark. The rates, latencies and limits are the model's own and are not measurements of anything in production. It is here because the behaviour is real even when the numbers are invented: queues grow, ceilings bind, and slow dependencies take systems down.

Off this page

What I'm building

the lab is a model · these are not

product 01private demo

Company Intelligence Platform

Personal project

An AI-powered intelligence layer for teams who need to stay on top of a set of companies and currently do it by hand. Specifics stay private until it's ready to be named.

Happy to walk through it in a demo.

product 02nearly built

Name under wraps

Something for daily use. The build is essentially done; it goes to private testing once it holds up under real use.