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Architecture 2026-07-01 10 min

Realtime Systems

Websockets, Supabase Realtime and conflict handling.

By Mohammad Zayed

Overview

Realtime systems push changes to clients over websockets or Supabase Realtime. The hard part is consistency under concurrency.

Patterns

  • Broadcast events from the server as the source of truth.
  • Optimistic UI updates, reconciled on confirm.
  • Presence channels for "who's online".

Conflicts

Use last-write-wins for low-stakes fields and explicit merge or locks for high-stakes ones (e.g. balances).

Frequently asked questions

Is this the only way to build it?
No. These are reference patterns we reuse. Adapt the boundaries to your constraints, team and compliance needs.
Should I copy this exactly?
Use it as a starting point. Validate each decision against your traffic, data sensitivity and team size.
Can NorthFlow implement this?
Yes. Book a strategy call and we'll tailor the architecture to your product.

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