Adama platform: the twenty-three modules around the core

Nov 2024 – Apr 2026 · age 42–44

What it was

Everything a living document needed to reach a browser and survive a machine failing. Around the language core Jeff built twenty-three modules: a Netty web tier with HTTP/2 and WebSockets, a multiplexed binary protocol between hosts with gossip on the same socket, the Caravan storage engine with a group commit every 800 microseconds, and a control plane of 106 API methods generated from one XML file, with a 110-command CLI generated from another. There was RxHTML, which compiled templates into JavaScript closures fed by deltas, an inbound mail server that checked SPF, DKIM and DMARC, a gateway that normalised three AI vendors, and an MCP endpoint so a coding agent could compile Adama from inside the editor. About 143,000 lines of Java, with the core modules heavily tested.

Wins, for the age

• At forty-two, still one person, Jeff kept 106 methods and 110 commands consistent across Java, JavaScript, REST, docs and tests by generating the whole surface from two XML files.
• Signed every AWS request by hand, SigV4 and all, with no SDK anywhere in the platform. An ape with a keyboard, speaking the cloud's own dialect.
• Implemented Web Push from scratch with HKDF and AES-GCM.
• Put pre-flight token estimates, output clamping and a concurrency limiter in the AI gateway, so every agent got the same guardrails.
• Found on their own what Svelte (2016) had found: compile the template, skip the virtual DOM.

What it taught

• Generate the surface. For a solo maintainer, consistency comes from one definition, not discipline.
• Write the storage engine when the workload is yours.
• The protocol should degrade to the boring thing: reconnecting state machines over a framed socket keep failure looking like a poll.
• A stub is a promise in the dark. Metering stayed an empty class, the harness launched a Main with no body, and the second region was five TODO: remote branches.

Genealogy

Ancestors: Lamancha IV: a Netty WebSocket server that compiled a game at boot and projected private views. Pack Unpack: folding many files into one indexed blob, the bundling instinct. Descendants: none on record. Its modules end here, stubs and all. Part of: Adama.

Epitaph

A cluster protocol that carried gossip beside documents, a storage engine that committed every 800 microseconds, and a control plane grown from XML. The billing module was an empty class, and the second region was five comments.