Notes on holding a room

Engineering, chat design, and growth curves — short posts from the people building the ops deck and the chatters behind it.

How we hold 400 viewers without drops

One host per session, a spare for the viewer poll, and why retention smoothing beats a bigger pool.

Feb 12, 2026

Viewers and chatters sharing an IP is the fastest way to look synthetic. We keep them on separate surfaces.

Feb 28, 2026

Slow ramps, staged refills, and why 20 per tick is the right burst size.

Mar 10, 2026

Live Viewers comes from the proxied public API, not from counting our own sockets. Here's why.

Mar 22, 2026

The free pool is fine for tests. For nightly runs, you want ISP lists you control.

Apr 5, 2026

No app, no download. Your presets, your ramps, and your chat personas live in the browser.

Apr 18, 2026