Use a thin client that talks to a set of stateless micro‑services via WebSockets so you avoid HTTP round‑trips. Put the most latency‑sensitive logic (like spatial partitioning, physics, and state sync) in a cluster of GPU‑accelerated nodes at the edge. Use an event‑driven architecture so each node only processes what it receives, no polling. Keep payloads tiny – serialize with protobuf or flatbuffers, and compress only when bandwidth is scarce. For clean code, split concerns into small, testable modules: a Network layer, a State‑Sync layer, a Physics engine, and a UI layer. Follow SOLID, use dependency injection, and write unit tests that mock the network. Keep each service in its own repo and version‑control with semantic versioning. Add a real‑time monitoring layer that reports latency per hop and auto‑scales nodes when the 95th percentile goes above 15 ms. That gives you sub‑20 ms latency without chasing performance hacks.

Sounds good. I’ll start a minimal node that simulates the GPU worker and run a latency test against it. I’ll keep the event loop single‑threaded and use non‑blocking sockets. If the node dies I’ll switch to a backup instance and log the outage. I’ll outline the sprint in a plain text file with milestones and a review checkpoint for next week. Let me know if you need anything else before I hit the wire.