Normalized results
Every row keeps its origin, license, size, availability signal, and ranking explanation.
Run a simulation to populate legal seeded records.
Browser-only systems design laboratory
Trusted sources. One clear stream.
Model a federated command-line search pipeline: fan out to source adapters, normalize unlike records, cluster duplicates, rank with transparent weights, and recover from slow or failing sources.
Interactive terminal simulator
$ fedsearch --legal-only --explainready
Choose a scenario and run the simulation.
Turn four adapters into one explainable result set.
A robust aggregator does not concatenate strings. It enforces source contracts, records provenance, harmonizes units, groups equivalent artifacts, and ranks only after policy checks.
Ranking weights
Adjust how trust, availability, freshness, and source diversity shape the score.
Deduplication clusters
Canonical titles and content fingerprints merge equivalent records without erasing provenance.
No clusters yet.
Concurrent vs sequential
Wall time is bounded by the slowest successful adapter, not the sum of every adapter.
Timeout and backoff
Retries are capped, jittered, and cancelled when the query budget expires.
Reference architecture
CLI parserLegal query allowlist
→
Adapter poolConcurrent bounded tasks
→
NormalizerTyped canonical schema
→
Policy + rankerTrust, dedup, provenance
Trust boundaries matter more than a fast result.
Search tooling inherits risks from every adapter. Protect users with an explicit source registry, strict parsing, bounded execution, privacy-preserving logs, and verifiable licensing.
Threat model and privacy checklist
Mark controls your production design would enforce. This checklist is saved only for this tab.
Scenario presets
Stress different failure modes without leaving the browser.
Checklist coverage0%
Lawful-use boundary
No query field accepts arbitrary terms. No result has a URL, magnet, hash, or download action. The seeded fixtures cover distributable Linux images and public-domain culture only.
Source policy
Production adapters should be allowlisted, versioned, rate-limited, schema-validated, and disabled automatically when provenance or license evidence disappears.
Privacy posture
Avoid central query logs when possible. Hash short-lived correlation IDs, redact arguments, cap retention, and let users inspect what telemetry leaves the client.
Glossary for the sharp edges.
Open each concept to see the design decision hidden behind an apparently simple multi-source command.
Check your architecture instincts.
Five questions test concurrency, normalization, provenance, retries, and privacy. Feedback appears immediately.
Export the architecture, not the content.
Download a JSON record of simulator settings, timing, ranking weights, and threat-model controls. It contains no links, magnets, downloads, or live-source data.