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2. Golang for the Control Plane

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-04-07 Domain: api-design, microservices

Context​

The control plane must concurrently manage many CDP WebSocket connections, spawn/destroy Docker containers via the Docker SDK, serve a REST API and the compiled React UI, and run as a small static binary suitable for distroless images (PRD §5.2, §20.9).

Decision​

Implement the control plane in Go using Gin for HTTP, chromedp for CDP, and the official Docker SDK / client-go for orchestration. Compile to a fully static CGO_ENABLED=0 binary that embeds the React assets and runs on gcr.io/distroless/static.

Consequences​

Positive: goroutines map naturally onto per-session CDP loops; <30 MB final image; ~150 MB control-plane memory budget achievable; one binary serves API + UI. Negative: team must be comfortable with Go; pack handlers written in Go require recompile (mitigated by WASM executor — see ADR 011).

§5.2 The Golang Advantage, §7 Detailed API Design, §20.9 GitOps and CI/CD