Maelstrom nodes receive messages on STDIN, send messages on STDOUT, and log debugging output on STDERR. Maelstrom nodes must not print anything that is not a message to STDOUT. Maelstrom will log STDERR output to disk for you.
Nodes and Networks
A Maelstrom test simulates a distributed system by running many nodes, and a network which routes messages between them. Each node has a unique string identifier, used to route messages to and from that node.
- Nodes
n1,n2,n3, etc. are instances of the binary you pass to Maelstrom. These nodes implement whatever distributed algorithm you’re trying to build: for instance, a key-value store. You can think of these as servers, in that they accept requests from clients and send back responses. - Nodes
c1,c2,c3, etc. are Maelstrom’s internal clients. Clients send requests to servers and expect responses back, via a simple asynchronous RPC protocol.