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Development Approach

Norri is built with a focus on quality, performance, and user experience. This page outlines our development principles and approach.

Clean Room Development

Norri is developed using a clean room methodology. This means:

  • Original implementations — All code is written from scratch based on general programming knowledge
  • No derivative code — We do not copy, reference, or derive from other media server codebases
  • Public documentation only — We only reference publicly available API documentation and specifications
  • Independent design decisions — Architecture and features are designed independently

Why Clean Room?

Clean room development ensures:

  1. Legal clarity — No licensing ambiguity or copyleft concerns
  2. Fresh perspective — Freedom to make different architectural choices
  3. No legacy baggage — No inherited technical debt or design constraints
  4. Clear ownership — Complete control over the codebase

What This Means in Practice

When implementing features, our developers:

  • Read public specifications and API documentation
  • Design solutions based on general software engineering principles
  • Do not look at source code of similar projects
  • Document the rationale for significant design decisions

Technology Stack

Norri is built on modern, proven technologies:

Server

  • Go — Fast, compiled language with excellent concurrency
  • PostgreSQL — Robust database for large media libraries
  • FFmpeg — Industry-standard media processing

Web Interface

  • SvelteKit — Modern, reactive UI framework
  • TypeScript — Type-safe JavaScript

Native Apps

  • Swift/SwiftUI — Native Apple TV and iOS
  • Kotlin — Native Android TV and mobile

Quality Standards

Testing

  • Comprehensive unit and integration tests
  • End-to-end testing for critical workflows
  • Performance benchmarks for database operations

Security

  • Security-first design principles
  • Regular dependency updates
  • No telemetry or data collection

Performance

  • Designed for 100,000+ item libraries
  • Optimized database queries
  • Efficient media streaming and transcoding

Contributing

While Norri is not currently open source, we value community feedback:

  • Bug reports — Email hello@norri.tv
  • Feature requests — Share your ideas with us
  • Documentation — Help improve these docs

See Open vs Closed Source for more on our licensing approach.