Blog

How adda is built.

Notes from the people who run it: the streaming path, chat, operations and the design rules, with what is measured and what is not.

Video25 Oct 20262 min

Video uploads: resumable parts and direct play

How adda accepts a 4 GB video without a job queue: parts at explicit offsets, ffprobe to decide, and a copy instead of a re-encode.

Streaming25 Oct 20262 min
RTMP in, HLS out, one auth webhook
How adda turns an encoder's stream into a watchable, recorded, chat-enabled channel with very little code.
Chat25 Oct 20262 min
Chat: saved first, then fanned out
Why every message is written to Postgres before anyone sees it, and how Redis carries it to every server.
Operations25 Oct 20262 min
One command to a live server
What the installer does, what it will not do for you, and why only three ports are public.
Chat25 Oct 20262 min
Anonymous chat that is still accountable
An account can chat as Anonymous. Viewers never learn who, the moderators can, and every lookup is logged.
Engineering25 Oct 20262 min
Search and pagination at self-hosted scale
Why the directories filter in memory, what that costs, and the rules that keep every view shareable.
Chat25 Oct 20262 min
Polls that survive a Redis restart
Live tallies in Redis for speed, votes in Postgres for truth, and a rebuild when the two disagree.
Chat25 Oct 20262 min
Six chat rules, in a fixed order
Bans, followers-only, slow mode, rate limits, length and duplicates: the order matters more than it looks.
Operations25 Oct 20262 min
Backups you have restored
A backup you have never restored is a hope. How adda's scripts work, and the dry run that proves them.
Engineering25 Oct 20262 min
Testing a streaming platform on a laptop
An embedded Postgres, an in-memory Redis, two real servers, and a browser watching a test pattern.
Product25 Oct 20262 min
The bell, and the one email an hour
Notifications that are quiet by default: an in-app bell, per-channel choices, and email only if you ask.
Design25 Oct 20262 min
A palette with one accent and one red
How a dark-first interface stays recognisable: marigold for action, red only for live, and rules a script can check.

How adda is built.

Video uploads: resumable parts and direct play

RTMP in, HLS out, one auth webhook

Chat: saved first, then fanned out

One command to a live server

Anonymous chat that is still accountable

Search and pagination at self-hosted scale

Polls that survive a Redis restart

Six chat rules, in a fixed order

Backups you have restored

Testing a streaming platform on a laptop

The bell, and the one email an hour

A palette with one accent and one red