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Engineering and product experiments at Circo, 2024–2026

The Circo Engineering Diaries

Circo-focused engineering and product experiments from a creator-first video platform: video infrastructure, DRM and provenance, live premieres, moderation, recommendations, the move to WebSockets and the years we took peer-to-peer seriously.

I am the CTO and Head of Product Engineering at Circo, a creator-first video platform, where I lead a sixteen-person engineering team. These diaries are the engineering and product experiments behind it, written as we made them: how we stream and protect video, why DRM is a business rule, how a recorded video can premiere like live, why an AI refusal is not a moderation verdict, what we learned from peer-to-peer chat and video, and where provenance with C2PA fits.

2024

  1. Part 0118 September 2024The Recommendation Problem in ReverseRecommendation asks what a viewer should watch. Creators ask what they should make. Turn the arrow around and the answer is already in the data.Recommendations · Product · 5 min
  2. Part 023 December 2024Before Circo Became a Creator Platform, We Experimented with P2P ChatIn 2024 we asked whether creators and fans could talk with no server of ours in the middle. The experiment is already shaping how we build messaging.P2P · Messaging · 5 min

2025

  1. Part 0313 February 2025DRM Is a Business Rule, Not a Cryptography FeatureEncrypting the video is the easy half. The hard half is deciding who may watch, and that is commerce, not cryptography.DRM · Video · 5 min
  2. Part 0420 February 2025Why We Moved from P2P Messaging to WebSocketsPeer-to-peer and server messaging both need something that is always on. The real choice is who owns it, and for a creator platform the answer was us.WebSockets · P2P · 5 min
  3. Part 058 October 2025Can You Really Own a Video? Exploring Decentralised Content InfrastructureDecentralised storage answers who holds the bytes. A creator's business depends on three other questions: who made it, who may watch it and who gets paid.Video · P2P · 5 min
  4. Part 0624 November 2025What Happens When a P2P Video Has 100,000 Viewers?Popularity is peer-to-peer's best case. Phones, the live edge, quality levels and the long tail are where it gets hard, and they decide whether a swarm can carry a creator platform.P2P · Video · 5 min

2026

  1. Part 0722 January 2026DRM, C2PA, and Decentralised Storage: What Actually Gives Creators Control?Three technologies, each sold as creator control. Each controls something different, and none of them, on its own, makes a creator the owner of their work.DRM · C2PA · 5 min
  2. Part 0829 January 2026When Recorded Video Needs to Feel LiveA premiere feels live because everyone is in the same moment. You can manufacture that moment from a recorded file, without a single live encoder.Video · Live · 5 min
  3. Part 099 February 2026An AI Refusal Is Not a Moderation VerdictWhen a model declines or a provider falls over, your pipeline is making a safety claim whether you meant to or not. Decide what that claim is.Moderation · AI · 5 min
  4. Part 1010 March 2026Why I Still Believe in P2P, Even After Choosing Different ArchitecturesWe chose servers for messaging and a conventional pipeline for video. I still believe in peer-to-peer, and the reasons say more about engineering leadership than about networks.P2P · Leadership · 5 min