Practice series

Realtime chat, sync & collaboration

Messaging, WebSockets, local-first state, CRDT/OT, fan-out, and backfill.

9 questions14 exact tags
  1. 01

    Chat App

    Design the client-side architecture of a WhatsApp-style mobile messenger — connection handling, message state, offline storage, and encryption all have to survi...

    Discord
    Preview
  2. 02

    Chat Service

    Design the backend infrastructure behind a chat product — stateful connection servers, message storage, and group fan-out — for hundreds of millions of concurre...

    Discord
    Preview
  3. 03

    Collaborative Shopping

    Design a collaborative shopping experience where multiple people share a single cart in real time, add and remove items concurrently, and one designated partici...

    Practice bank
    Preview
  4. 04

    Dropbox

    Design Dropbox — a cloud file storage and synchronization service where users upload large files and keep them in sync across devices and shared folders.

    Dropbox
    Free
  5. 05

    Facebook Messenger

    Design Facebook Messenger — a real-time chat system delivering messages with low latency, ordering guarantees, and multi-device sync at massive scale.

    Meta
    Free
  6. 06

    Google Doc

    Design Google Docs’ real-time collaborative editing — multiple users typing in the same document simultaneously and seeing each other’s edits converge correctly...

    Google
    Preview
  7. 07

    Google Drive

    Design Google Drive as a permissioned file platform — folder hierarchies, shared drives, and access control that scale across billions of files and third-party...

    Google
    Preview
  8. 08

    Real-time Multiplayer Game

    Design an authoritative server for a real-time multiplayer game.

    Riot Games
    Preview
  9. 09

    Live Comments

    Design a live comments system that fans out comments from one live event to millions of concurrent viewers in real time.

    Meta
    Preview