Run Linearlite

Running the LinearLite demo + pipeline visualizer

Start / stop

scripts/linearlite.sh start <size>   # small|medium(default)|large|xlarge|<issue count>
scripts/linearlite.sh status
scripts/linearlite.sh stop           # ALWAYS stop before restarting (teardown is pattern-based)

Boots: ephemeral Postgres (logical replication) + durable-streams + Rust engine + tRPC API + LinearLite web UI + the pipeline visualizer. Log: /tmp/el-linearlite.log (EL_LOG to change).

Use the caddy HTTPS fronts in a browser — for BOTH apps

Browsers cap plain HTTP/1.1 at ~6 connections per host. Both apps hold many concurrent live streams (shape long-polls, the visualizer's /trace SSE + engine polling), so over plain HTTP they freeze silently once the cap is hit. Caddy fronts them with HTTPS/HTTP-2, which multiplexes every stream over one connection:

• LinearLite → https://localhost:8443/ (never the raw vite port; vite also binds IPv6 [::1] only)
• Pipeline visualizer → https://localhost:5443/ (the plain http://localhost:5180/ is fine for curl, but in a browser session alongside the app it competes for the same connection budget — the visualizer also needs its caddy front)

Ports: DEMO_HTTPS_PORT (8443), DEMO_VIZ_HTTPS_PORT (5443), DEMO_VIZ_PORT (5180), DEMO_VIZ=0 skips the visualizer, DEMO_HTTPS=0 skips caddy (dev/curl only). The cert comes from Caddy's local CA: run caddy trust once, or click through the warning.

Running the visualizer standalone against any engine (front it with caddy yourself for browser use):

ELECTRIC_CIRCUITS_ENGINE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:<engine-port> VIZ_PORT=5180 \
  pnpm --filter @electric-circuits/pipeline-viz dev
caddy reverse-proxy --from https://localhost:5443 --to 127.0.0.1:5180

Observing shape retention live

Shapes are retained through an active → dormant → evicted lifecycle (apps/engine/src/retention.rs); switching users parks the old user's shapes (dashed + DORMANT badge in the visualizer) instead of dropping them, and a rejoin reactivates them by change-log replay. The production timers are slow (30 min idle); boot with second-scale knobs to watch it happen:

ELECTRIC_CIRCUITS_SHAPE_IDLE_SECS=12 ELECTRIC_CIRCUITS_RETENTION_SWEEP_SECS=3 \
ELECTRIC_CIRCUITS_SHAPE_DORMANT_TTL_SECS=3600 scripts/linearlite.sh start small

Then switch "Viewing as" users in LinearLite and watch the visualizer: the previous user's routed shapes go dormant after ~15 s; switching back reactivates them. Subquery and aggregate shapes are exempt from dormancy by design. Lifecycle is visible on GET /graph (shapes[].state) and GET /shapes/{id} (state).

Headless verification (no browser needed)

The engine's endpoints back everything the visualizer shows:

• GET /graph, GET /state, GET /state/node?id=<node> — topology + live per-node state + deep dumps (routing indexes, aggregate fold internals, subquery inner sets)
• GET /trace — SSE per-envelope pipeline traces
• GET /shapes/{id}/rows, GET /shapes/{id}/log, POST /query — shape contents vs. Postgres ground truth
• GET /replication/lsn — {lsn, sync, pendingFlips} (drain barrier)

Find the engine URL in the demo log: grep ENGINE_LISTENING /tmp/el-linearlite.log.

Gotchas

• One demo instance at a time; a leftover tsx start.ts/caddy/engine keeps ports and serves stale code. scripts/linearlite.sh stop, else pkill -f electric-circuits-engine, pkill -f "tsx start.ts", pkill -f caddy.
• The demo Postgres is ephemeral (mkdtemp) — data does not survive a restart. Leaked ephemeral Postgres instances exhaust macOS shared memory (SHMMNI≈32) and make initdb fail everywhere; clean with ipcs -ma + ipcrm -m <id> for 0-attach segments.