Limitations

Strata is pre-1.0. This page lists the current limits.

What works today

• A single-node server with delta sync, presence, and shelf persistence across restarts.
• The v0 frame set: join, leave, delta, presence_set, create, delete, ping, welcome, snapshot, presence_state, presence_diff, deleted, error, pong.
• strata_client on both Erlang and JavaScript targets, with reconnect demonstrated in the bundled examples.
• Optional typed LWW-register fields and record schemas through strata_document.
• A read-only admin page at /admin.
• Message limits for each connection through StrataConfig.
• A configurable encoded-document growth budget, including retained metadata.
• Target-specific unit tests for each package.
• Playwright end-to-end tests for the bundled examples.

What may change before 1.0

• The wire protocol. Frames use "v": 0, but there is no compatibility promise before Strata 1.0.
• Public package APIs.
• The on-disk storage format. A release may require re-creating STRATA_DATA_DIR.
• Packages are not yet published to Hex; install from source.
• Clients check typed schemas when they read data. The server does not enforce field types or schema versions.
• strata_document initially supports LWW-register fields only, without Watershed-style nested channel handles.
• Field removal is observed-remove/add-wins, so a concurrent write survives.
• The server broadcasts accepted state, not merely queued submissions. Opt-in operation receipts distinguish acceptance, rejection, and unknown outcomes, but do not acknowledge persistence.
• The server exposes bounded operational data through admin status, but has no built-in health endpoint, HTTP metrics endpoint, or structured log format.
• Checkpointed tombstones survive restart and have no expiry. Deleted IDs cannot be reused. An unflushed deletion can still be lost on a crash.

Not planned for 1.0

Not in 1.0	Why	Tracking
JWT and multi-tenant isolation	Changes auth, storage keys, and topic layout	#3
Chunked snapshots	Single-frame snapshots are enough for small and medium documents	#5
Multi-node clustering	Needs document ownership and coordination design	#6
Durable workflow intent and recovery	Current dispatch is session-local and best-effort; browser loss has no retry owner	#27
Automatic causal-metadata pruning	Lattice has a prune primitive, but Strata lacks a safe stability frontier; v1 uses a growth budget	#7
Mutating admin actions	Waiting on stronger auth and audit logging	—
Per-IP rate limiting	A reverse-proxy concern for 1.0	—

See the roadmap for the full 1.0 plan. Read Compatibility and Upgrades before you update a server that has stored data.