Building a Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Distributed System with Claude AI in a Weekend
By
henrygarner
The kind of bagel that ruins lesser bagels for you.
Summary
The article describes a weekend project where the author used Claude AI to build a Byzantine fault-tolerant distributed system without writing any implementation code. Using the Allium behavioral specification language, the author provided specifications and worked through bugs conversationally with Claude, which generated 4,749 lines of Kotlin code and 103 passing unit tests in 50 minutes. The piece explores the potential of AI-assisted programming, behavioral specification languages, and rapid prototyping of complex distributed systems through natural language interaction.
Key quotes
· 5 pulledOver a weekend, between board games and time with my kids, Claude and I built a distributed system with Byzantine fault tolerance, strong consistency and crash recovery under arbitrary failures.
I described the behaviour I wanted in Allium, worked through the bugs conversationally and didn't write a line of implementation code.
Here is the prompt that produced the first 4,749 lines of Kotlin and 103 passing unit tests in 50 minutes:
The prompt is short because the specifications are not. 3,000 lines of Allium behavioural specification sat behind that prompt, drawing on the distrib
A behavioural specification language, AI agent teams, and a Byzantine fault-tolerant distributed system built in 48 hours.
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