Technical guide

Technical guide

This section explains how Elah works, why its boundaries exist, and which claims have executable evidence.

Elah separates four concerns:

• the data plane carries client and gameplay traffic;
• the control plane manages membership, topology, and future ownership;
• storage preserves authoritative world data;
• independent laboratories test contracts and failure behavior.

Current production code implements a loopback-only control laboratory and a separate read-only Observer. The multi-worker runtime remains a design target.

Read in this order

1. System architecture
2. Observer internals
3. Protocol Laboratory
4. Reliability model
5. Security boundaries
6. Release evidence
7. Technical roadmap

Canonical repository documents

The wiki explains the system. The repository remains authoritative for exact development and contribution procedures:

• Architecture
• Invariants
• Failure model
• Terminology
• Architecture decision records
• Contributor checks