HLD Mastery started as a frustration. System design interviews test whether you can talk about distributed systems — but nothing in the standard prep path actually makes those systems click. You memorize diagrams. You read blog posts. You still get to the interview unsure whether adding a cache layer actually fixes anything.
This is a different approach. Every concept is animated — the diagram evolves as you scroll through the explanation. Every game level puts you in front of a broken architecture under real traffic, and you fix it by dragging components onto a canvas and watching the metrics respond. You learn by doing, not by reading.
It's a solo project built in the margins of a full-time job and an OMSCS degree — a few hours a week, shipped incrementally. No team, no funding, no roadmap longer than a month. Just a tool I wanted to exist.