PeakD Image Proxy Experiment: Where We Are and How We Got Here

Let's take a break from AI tooling stuffs and let's focus on some potential improvements for PeakD and Hive: an alternative image proxy project we started for PeakD.

The short version is simple:

• This started as an experiment because of recent issues with the default Hive image server PeakD depends on.
• This is still exploration and brainstorming, not a drop-in replacement we can swap into production overnight.
• The project is already useful, but we are still validating behavior under real load and edge-case traffic.

Why this exists

PeakD is image-heavy, and instability on the default Hive image server directly impacts user experience. Instead of only patching around incidents, we started testing a PeakD-focused proxy pipeline as an alternative option to use in the future.

Important: this is still an experiment. It is not guaranteed we will be able to switch PeakD to this new system.

Architecture in brief

The evolution so far:

• Started from a lite port of hive/imagehoster (https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/imagehoster)
• Removed features not needed for PeakD (upload, filesystem storage)
• Reowrked the code to use multiple concurrent processes
• Evolved to dispatcher + queue + workers for explicit backpressure control

Current stack:

• Bun + TypeScript
• Hono as web framework
• cache-first request flow
• bounded queue + worker pool + overflow fallback
• status endpoint with metrics and worker health

Current status

Load and performance testing are ongoing. Testing that the images are loaded is the easy part. The difficult part is tuning the queue/concurrency, validating cache dynamics, and testing failure modes under pressure.

Next steps

After more tests, we can start controlled experiments on PeakD. Even with full API compatibility, PeakD itself still needs a small integration rework to route traffic safely:

• A/B testing controls
• gradual traffic shifting
• safeguards to avoid moving the whole community at once and overloading the new proxy

Project repository (public, work in progress): https://gitlab.com/peakd/peak-image-proxy

If this direction proves stable enough, an official post from @peak.open may follow.