Cards/DatabasesSystem Design · Day 20Aug 20, 2026

You Posted It. Then It Vanished.

You Posted It. Then It Vanished. — system design card, day 20, databases

You leave a comment. The page refreshes. Your comment isn't there.

Nothing failed. Your write went to the primary. Your read went to a replica that hasn't caught up yet — 200 milliseconds behind, which is excellent by every metric on the dashboard.

Read replicas are how you scale reads. The cost is replication lag, and the cruellest version is when the missing data is your own.

Other people not seeing your comment for 200ms is invisible. You not seeing it looks like a broken product.

The fix isn't faster replication. It's routing:

ReadRoute it to
Your own dataThe primary, or a replica known to be caught up
Everyone else'sAny replica — lag is fine

Usually implemented as: after a user writes, pin that user's reads to the primary for a few seconds.

Consistency isn't one setting. It's a promise you make to each person separately.