← All documentsKura — Guinness's In-House Data Engine
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Overview
Guinness Platform · Internal

Kura — Guinness's In-House Data Engine

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Native first, Orca fallback

Native first, Orca fallback, snapshot alwaysAppasks KuraKuranative source?World Bank / HaverOrcax-trillion (live)SnapshotSQLite, datedevery live answer is snapshotted — Orca down, app still answers
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Every live answer is snapshotted

  • Kura tries Orca first, on every call — no stale data while Orca is healthy.
  • Each successful answer is saved to SQLite on the box, stamped with the date.
  • If Orca is unreachable, Kura serves the last snapshot instead of an error.
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Why it matters

  • Guinness owns some data outright — World Bank sovereign data, and Haver macro via its own subscription.
  • Those sources are served directly, in-house, with no x-trillion involvement.
  • If the x-trillion relationship ever ends, apps keep working on dated data instead of breaking.
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For the team

  • Kura is internal plumbing — users never open it directly; it sits behind Brian's data answers.
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Guinness · Platform briefing

Kura — Guinness's In-House Data Engine

Internal · The data engine running on Guinness's own Hetzner box — serves Guinness-owned data directly, falls back to x-trillion Orca for the rest, and keeps a dated snapshot of every live answer so the apps never go dark. Not a client-facing app.

Native first, Orca fallback#

Kura is internal. It runs on the Guinness box (kura.guinness.x-trillion.com) and sits between Brian and x-trillion's Orca gateway. For a small but growing set of tools it answers directly from Guinness-owned sources; for everything else it forwards to Orca and returns the same answer Orca would have given.

  • Internal — not in the client sidebar, no login screen of its own.
  • Native today: sovereign-credit indicators (World Bank Open Data, licence-free) and macro time series (Haver Analytics, Guinness's own subscription).
  • Everything else is routed straight through to x-trillion Orca — the "strangler" pattern: native grows, the fallback shrinks over time.
Native first, Orca fallback, snapshot alwaysAppasks KuraKuranative source?World Bank / HaverOrcax-trillion (live)SnapshotSQLite, datedevery live answer is snapshotted — Orca down, app still answers

Every live answer is snapshotted#

Kura always tries live Orca first — while Orca is healthy, nobody sees anything different. Behind the scenes, every successful answer is written to a small SQLite store on the box, stamped with the date it was fetched.

  • Live is attempted on every single call — no artificial staleness.
  • If Orca is slow, unreachable, or the connection to x-trillion is ever lost entirely, Kura serves the last stored copy instead of an error — clearly marked as dated, never presented as live.
  • The moment Orca is reachable again, answers go back to live automatically. A queued query the moment it's asked while offline gets backfilled by a /refresh replay once Orca returns.

Why it matters#

Guinness already owns some of its data outright rather than licensing it through x-trillion — World Bank sovereign indicators are free and public, and Haver Analytics macro data is served through Guinness's own paid subscription. Kura is where that ownership actually shows up in the running platform: those answers come from Guinness's own pipes, not x-trillion's.

The snapshot layer is the other half of the same idea. If the relationship with x-trillion ever changes, the apps built on top of Kura keep answering — on the last known-good data, honestly dated — rather than breaking outright the day Orca access ends.

For the team#

Kura is internal plumbing. Users never open it directly — this guide explains what sits behind Brian's data answers, and why the platform keeps working even if x-trillion's Orca is ever unavailable.

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