Architectural Patterns and Anti-Patterns Questions

Clarify requirements & constraints

• External plugins: untrusted, multi-tenant, need strong isolation, regulatory/compliance concerns.
• Internal plugins: trusted teams, higher performance expectations, easier support.
• Nonfunctional: latency SLOs, language ecosystem expectations, developer onboarding time.

High-level comparison

• Sandboxed isolated runtimes (Wasm / container sandboxes)

  • Security: Strong process-level isolation, limited syscall surface; good for untrusted code.
  • Performance: Wasm has low overhead and fast startup; container sandboxes incur more overhead but support heavier workloads.
  • Debugging & observability: Harder—need tooling (DWARF for Wasm, sidecar telemetry) and structured proxies for logs/metrics.
  • Developer UX: Language constraints for Wasm (targeted toolchains); containers support any language but heavier CI.
  • Cold starts: Wasm cold starts are small; containers slower.
  • Language support: Wasm favors Rust/Go/AssemblyScript and increasing polyglot via WASI; containers: any runtime.
  • Deployment complexity: Platform must manage runtimes, OCI images, lifecycle, attestation, resource limits.

• In-process with restricted APIs

  • Security: Easier APIs but high risk—bugs can escalate to full compromise; requires strict sandboxing layers (seccomp, language sandboxes).
  • Performance: Best latency and memory sharing; excellent for high-throughput internal extensions.
  • Debugging & observability: Easier—native debugging, full traces and metrics.
  • Developer UX: Familiar languages and libs; simpler local iteration.
  • Cold starts: Minimal.
  • Language support: Broad, but safe embedding depends on language runtime.
  • Deployment complexity: Simpler orchestration but complex hardening and continuous verification.

Recommendation (Product perspective)

• External plugins: Use isolated runtimes (Wasm + WASI sandboxing as default; container sandboxes for advanced needs). Rationale: highest security, predictable multi-tenant isolation, reasonable startup and newer tooling for debugging. Offer standardized API surface, capability tokens, and SDKs plus a plugin review/attestation pipeline.
• Internal plugins: Allow in-process plugins with restricted APIs and strict code review + runtime hardening for speed and better DX. Provide optional migration path to Wasm for teams needing safe multi-tenancy.

Operational & roadmap items

• Invest in developer tooling: local Wasm emulators, source-level debugging, and rich SDKs.
• Observability: enforce sidecar exporters, standardized logging/trace schema, and per-plugin metrics.
• Security program: sandbox fuzzing, policy CI, runtime admission controls.
• Offer migration guides and cost/latency profiles so teams choose appropriately.