System Design Space: design exercises, experiments, and knowledge checks (Category #SystemDesign)
In July, I wrote about the Russian wording of the materials, new ML/AI topics, and a book draft. Since July, system-design.space has gained a substantial practice section: you can design a system yourself, inject a failure, and check how well you understood what you read.
Here are a few things worth trying:
1️⃣ 45 system design exercises
The practice section covers everything from TinyURL and chat to a RAG system and an AI agent platform. Each exercise follows the seven steps of the interview framework: requirements, system boundaries, data flows, data model, technology choices, scaling, and operations. You work through your own solution first, then compare it with a reference walkthrough. There are shorter 40-minute exercises and longer ones designed for an hour.
2️⃣ 8 labs where you can break things
They run directly in the browser: you can trigger a cache stampede, isolate a replica, test a schema migration under load, or explore a regional failover. The labs share a rhythm: predict the behavior, inject a failure, check the result, and work through why it happened. A good way to discover exactly where a familiar diagram stops making sense :)
3️⃣ A dedicated catalog of 20 interactive models
The playgrounds let you explore consensus and load-balancing algorithms, replication, B-trees and LSM trees, MVCC, TCP, and other mechanisms. Record a prediction, run the model, then compare it with what you observe. You can share experiment settings via a link and export the result.
4️⃣ Knowledge checks and review
The tracks page now includes an entry diagnostic, skill mastery tracking, and spaced review with Anki card export. Mastery is based on assessments, practice exercises, and labs; marking a chapter as read is not enough on its own. Progress stays in your browser. To continue on another device, you can export and import a learning archive, including bookmarks, your track, and practice results.
5️⃣ Another 19 chapters, bringing the library to 327
New chapters cover hot keys and rebalancing, distributed locks, transaction anomalies, Outbox/Inbox/CDC, zero-downtime migrations, and tenant isolation. There is also a RAG platform mock interview transcript, material on offline-first systems and technology selection, and reviews of Agentic Design Patterns and the Early Release of Regenerative Software. Find them in the material catalog.
6️⃣ A redesign with a calmer color scheme
I also reworked the site's appearance: pages now share a blue accent, while the colorful backgrounds that varied from chapter to chapter have given way to a calmer palette. Color highlights help distinguish cautions, risks, and useful takeaways. I made cards, headings, and body text more consistent and refined contrast in both light and dark themes, so the styling is less of a distraction when reading longer materials.
If you have not visited the site in a while, there is now a reason to stop by and look at the changes. And if something does not work, chapters now have a "Suggest an edit" button at the bottom that opens an issue in the community repository.
#SystemDesign #Architecture #DistributedSystems #Engineering #Interview