System designHardsd-p103

Subject RealtimeLevel Senior~45 minCommon in Distributed systems interviewsIndustries Technology, Software development

Question

Design a smart-home platform that lets users control devices (lights, locks, thermostats) from an app, where devices may be offline and commands must be reliable.

What a strong answer looks like

Clarify scale and constraints first. Propose a clean component breakdown, then go deep on the hard parts — data model, bottlenecks, consistency, failure modes — and name the trade-offs you are making.

Learn the concepts

Narrate your design

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Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.