Real-time features need a recovery path

The misconception

Real-time transport can make an experience immediate, but it does not guarantee that every client receives every event exactly once or in order.

Designing for reality

I learned to treat notifications and socket messages as signals that fresh state exists—not as the only copy of that state.

• Reconnect with backoff and restore subscriptions
• Use event identifiers or versions to detect stale data
• Synchronize authoritative state after reconnect or app open
• Make notification actions re-check authorization
• Measure provider acceptance separately from user delivery

The lesson

The reliable design is not the one that never disconnects. It is the one that knows how to recover when disconnection, delay, duplication, and missed events happen.