Replacing Next.js ISR with a custom Cloudflare cache layer

Mintlify, a platform providing documentation for numerous developer sites, faced challenges with slow cold starts affecting user experience due to frequent deployments that invalidated their Next.js ISR caching solution. To address this, they developed a custom caching solution using Cloudflare products, effectively bringing their cache hit rate from 76% to nearly 100%. This new system separates deployments from cache invalidation, utilizing a proxy layer to manage requests and cache updates, automatic version detection for revalidation, and a proactive prewarming strategy for documentation updates. The solution includes a revalidation coordinator using Cloudflare's Durable Objects to prevent race conditions and a dedicated revalidation worker for cache warming. The approach ensures that caches are consistently warm, regardless of whether changes stem from new code deployments or documentation updates, thereby improving page load speeds and reliability. The system's self-healing capability further enhances robustness, automatically retrying failed revalidations and managing locks. Mintlify invites interested individuals to explore career opportunities to work on such innovative engineering projects.

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