Category
Engineering
How we build Snakken: architecture decisions, patterns that survived production, and the trade-offs behind them.
2026-07-21 Events on the bus, truth in the database Snakken's backend announces what happens inside it as events. We set two rules before the first line of configuration: the database stays the only source of truth, and the bus obeys the same privacy line as our API. What those rules do to the design — and what it costs. Engineering 2026-07-05 Finding local topics without sending posts to US AI services Local topics should surface on their own when something is happening on your streets — without a predefined list of categories, and without user posts being shipped to a US AI service to work out what they are about. How we detect emergent neighbourhood topics on our own hardware in the EU, keep a topic from exposing one person, and the tuning problem short German posts handed us. Engineering 2026-06-28 An evacuation order should not have to be a tweet A summer of heatwaves, wildfire and water shortages puts the question plainly: how do you get an official warning to exactly the people standing in the danger zone? We sketch what it would take for Snakken to carry emergency warnings — and how the same location design that keeps our servers from seeing your coordinates is what makes it possible. A design exploration, not a shipped feature. Engineering 2026-06-22 Moderating a feed without watching the people in it Most content moderation runs on signals we threw away on purpose: behavioural profiles, the social graph, location history. A look at the mid-2026 state of the art, why a feed our servers can't surveil needs a different design, and how Quick Freeze and the Login-Falle fit a platform built to keep as little as possible. Engineering 2026-05-15 One feed, two streams of time Snakken's feed mixes things that expire in hours with things that should exist for years. The data model that makes a moving-boxes post and the corner café live in the same stream — and the reaper that keeps the ephemeral side honest. Engineering