How a Developer Built a 9,000-User IMAX Seat Alert App That Scales Instantly

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Andrew Baker, an engineer at Temporal, built IMAXXING after 150,000 tickets for The Odyssey in 70mm IMAX sold out almost immediately, leaving many fans without seats. The app monitors every 70mm IMAX screening across the US and notifies subscribers in real time when desirable seats become available due to cancellations. What began as a weekend side project has grown to over 9,000 users, requiring a robust and scalable architecture. The system uses Temporal's durable execution model, entity workflows per user subscription, and smart debouncing with 60-second timers to batch alerts without wasting compute resources. Serverless workers on Google Cloud Run allow the app to autoscale based on task queue depth, handling sudden demand spikes without over-provisioning infrastructure.

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