Part 2 of our video streaming saga. Read Part 1: How we replaced WebRTC with WebSockets →
The Year is 2025 and We’re Sending JPEGs
Let me tell you about the time we spent three months building a gorgeous, hardware-accelerated, WebCodecs-powered, 60fps H.264 streaming pipeline over WebSockets...
...and then replaced it with grim | curl when the WiFi got a bit sketchy.
I wish I was joking.
Act I: Hubris (Also Known As “Enterprise Networking Exists”)
We’re building Helix, an AI platform where autonomous coding agents work in cloud sandboxes. Users need to watch their AI assistants work. Think “screen share, but the thing being shared is a robot writing code.”
Last week, we explained how we replaced WebRTC with a custom WebSocket streaming pipeline. This week: why that wasn’t enough.
The constraint that ruined everything: It has to work on enterprise networks.
You know what enterprise networks love? HTTP. HTTPS. Port 443. That’s it. That’s the list.
... continue reading