Real-time systems need more than sockets: they need boundaries, queues, observability, and graceful failure modes.

Real-time architecture should separate transport, domain events, persistence, and delivery guarantees. Queues and cache help, but only when ownership and failure behavior are explicit.

socket.on("message:create", async (payload) => {
  const message = await messageService.create(payload);
  await eventBus.publish("message.created", { id: message.id });
  socket.to(payload.roomId).emit("message:created", message);
});