Handbook · 34 chapters · ~72 min
Living Systems Handbook
Understand microservices the way you understand people. One human body is one microservice; its body parts are modules; a whole society is a complete app; and lifestyles — the rat race, a peaceful life, just chilling — are different kinds of systems. Then grow your own humans from DNA with AWS CDK and serverless, and build a small café ecosystem from scratch.
Start reading →The idea
01 · 3 minThe living systems ideaOne human is one microservice, body parts are modules, society is the app — and lifestyles are system types.02 · 3 minOne body or many? Monoliths and microservicesWhen one capable person is enough, when a team is better — and the costs of hiring.03 · 2 minServerless humansWhat "serverless" means — humans who appear when needed, and the world that feeds and houses them.
Anatomy of one human
04 · 2 minAnatomy of one humanThe full body map of a microservice — every module, what it does and which AWS service plays it.05 · 2 minSenses and skinHow a microservice takes in the world — APIs, events, queues, schedules, uploads — and filters it at the skin.06 · 2 minThe brainBusiness logic — keeping decisions pure, separate from senses and memory, and easy to test.07 · 2 minMemoryEach human owns its memory — DynamoDB, S3, caches, forgetting with TTL, and why sharing a database hurts.08 · 2 minVoice and hearingTalking vs writing letters vs announcing — sync APIs, queues and events, and how to hear things twice safely.09 · 2 minHandsActing on the outside world — calling other services and third parties with timeouts, retries and care.10 · 2 minThe immune system and the ID cardSecurity for one microservice — who can call it, what it may do, and how it protects its data.11 · 2 minHeartbeat and healthLogs as a diary, metrics as a pulse, traces as following a thought, alarms as pain.
Growing a human from DNA
12 · 2 minCDK is DNAInfrastructure as code with AWS CDK — apps, stacks and constructs, and why every body should be grown from code.13 · 2 minSetting up the projectTools, account setup, cdk init and a folder structure where every human has its own home.14 · 2 minGrowing one humanA complete microservice from scratch in CDK — memory, brain, senses, voice, ID card and heart, then deploy.15 · 2 minHealth check-ups — testing a humanUnit tests for the brain, CDK assertions for the DNA, and integration tests for the living body.16 · 2 minThe birth pipeline — CI/CDGrowing humans automatically from Git to dev, staging and production, without stored AWS keys.
The ecosystem
17 · 2 minDesigning a societyFinding the right humans — bounded contexts, one job each, and mapping the café ecosystem.18 · 2 minThe town square — EventBridgeEvent-driven choreography with a shared notice board, rules that route announcements, and inboxes.19 · 2 minThe manager — Step Functions and sagasOrchestrating multi-step work, handling failures with apologies (compensation), and when a manager helps.20 · 2 minPost office, loudspeakers and city gatesSQS inboxes, SNS announcements, API Gateway at the gate, and how outsiders talk to the society.21 · 2 minThe shared worldWhat every human shares — identity, laws, roads, monitoring and the history books — without sharing memory.
Lifestyles
22 · 2 minLifestyles are systemsRat race, a peaceful life and just chilling — how a system's "lifestyle" shapes its architecture.23 · 3 minThe rat raceHigh-pressure systems — flash sales, ticketing, trading — and how to survive spikes without burning out.24 · 2 minLiving in peaceBalanced, steady systems — event-driven, well-bounded, observable and efficient, built to last.25 · 2 minJust chillingLow-traffic systems that sleep most of the time — scale to zero, near-zero cost, minimal care.26 · 2 minOther lifestylesThe night owl, the party animal, the monk, the hermit, the nomad and the elder — more system archetypes.
Pilot: Café Sukoon
27 · 2 minMeet Café SukoonThe pilot project — a small café ecosystem with four humans, its events, and the plan to build it.28 · 2 minHiring the WaiterAssemble the shared world and the first human, with a lifestyle setting you can switch at deploy time.29 · 2 minThe kitchen comes aliveHire the Chef, Cashier and Messenger — inboxes, rules, partial batch failures and the full event flow.30 · 2 minA day in three lifestylesThe same café on a quiet Monday, a calm Wednesday and a crazy Friday — configuration, load tests and what changes.31 · 2 minRunning the caféDay-to-day operations — dashboards, costs, security hardening, cleanup and ideas to grow the pilot.
Teaching with living systems
32 · 3 minTeaching with living systemsWorkshop plans, a hands-on "human microservices" role-play game, exercises and a quiz.33 · 2 minWhere the analogy breaksEvery metaphor has limits — the places where software is not like people, and why that matters.34 · 2 minThe analogy dictionaryEvery term in the handbook — the human idea and its software meaning, side by side.
Written by Bipin Singh
Work with meSenior Full-Stack Engineer · AI & AWS. I design and build serverless systems on AWS — and love explaining them simply.
More handbooks by Bipin Singh: browse the library →