Aquifer — MCP Traffic Framework

Self-hosted MCP server framework for coordinating HTTP traffic from distributed agents. Aquifer absorbs retry storms before they turn into a bigger LLM bill — durable queuing, controlled dispatch pace, and cryptographic agent identity via the L8 protocol, exposed through pluggable adapters.

Built by Rahmi Pruitt — open to AI infra consulting, founding engineer, and contract work.

The problem

Distributed agents call tools and APIs in bursts. Your backend gets overwhelmed on inbound. Your app gets 429s on outbound. One slow dependency takes everything else down with it.

Aquifer gives those agents a coordination layer. It absorbs the burst, queues requests durably (SQLite by default, or Pebble — see below), and releases them at the rate you configure. Your backend decides the pace. The upstream decides the pace. Whoever needs to slow things down — wins.

What the numbers actually say (all in benchmark.md, same shared-cpu-1x/512MB Fly.io tier throughout): a 10x traffic spike gets absorbed with zero failures; 30/30 jobs survive a kill -9 mid-drain; admission control sheds load with clean 429s instead of falling over. The SQLite backend's real throughput ceiling is ~200-400 req/s on a single instance — found by chasing down a hardcoded single-connection bug, not assumed. Switching to the optional Pebble backend (AQUIFER_STORE_BACKEND=pebble) roughly doubles that ceiling to ~400-600 req/s, though more CPU cores don't move it further — the storage engine's own write path, not available compute, is what's actually serialized at that point.

Two ways to use it

MCP tools — coordinate distributed agents

agents / MCP clients  →  aquifer_enqueue_job  →  Aquifer queue  →  target API

Agents call Aquifer as an MCP server instead of racing each other directly against the same backend or external API. Aquifer returns a job id immediately, dispatches the request at a controlled rate, and delivers the result to your webhook.

HTTP API — protect your API

agents / clients  →  POST /jobs to Aquifer  →  your backend (at controlled RPS)

Agents hammering your API over HTTP? Aquifer queues their requests and drains them to your backend at a pace it can handle. Your backend returns X-Aqueduct-Rps headers to signal how fast it wants traffic in real time.

Outbound — respect external APIs

your app  →  POST /jobs to Aquifer  →  OpenAI / Stripe / any API (at controlled RPS)

Calling a rate-limited upstream? Aquifer queues the calls and dispatches them at your configured rate. If the upstream signals a slowdown via headers, Aquifer backs off automatically.

In both cases — the upstream response headers are the final say on pace. Your config sets the ceiling. Headers can only reduce below it, never exceed it. When pressure clears, the rate recovers gradually back to your ceiling.

This is not only rate limiting after something breaks. It is dynamic pacing before the failure. Services you control can tell agent traffic to slow down while they keep serving requests, giving autoscalers time to add capacity instead of forcing clients into retries, 429 storms, or cascading outages. If many tools, agents, and services speak the same pacing headers, traffic across the internet can coordinate more gracefully instead of every client guessing alone.

How it works

1. Client submits a job through an adapter (MCP tool or HTTP endpoint) and moves on
2. Aquifer persists it to SQLite — survives crashes, re-dispatches on restart
3. A per-upstream worker dispatches at your configured RPS with jitter
4. On completion Aquifer POSTs your webhook with the response body and status
5. The upstream can adjust the rate live via X-Aqueduct-* response headers

Quick start

Binary

go install github.com/rjpruitt16/aquifer/cmd/aquifer@latest
aquifer

Docker

docker run -p 8080:8080 -v $(pwd)/data:/data \
  -e AQUIFER_ADAPTER=http \
  -e DB_PATH=/data/aquifer.db \
  ghcr.io/rjpruitt16/aquifer

Fly.io

git clone https://github.com/rjpruitt16/aquifer
cd aquifer
flyctl launch --name my-aquifer --no-deploy
flyctl volumes create aquifer_data --size 1 --region iad
flyctl deploy

Configuration

Set CONFIG_PATH to a YAML file to configure rate limits per upstream hostname:

# aquifer.yml — copy from aquifer.example.yml
defaults:
  rps: 2
  max_concurrent: 1

upstreams:
  api.openai.com:
    rps: 10
    max_concurrent: 3
  api.stripe.com:
    rps: 20
    max_concurrent: 5
  your-backend.internal:
    rps: 50
    max_concurrent: 10

Admission control is opt-in — leave these unset and Aquifer accepts everything, same as before. Set any one of them to start shedding load with clean 429/413 responses instead of degrading under memory or disk pressure. See benchmark.md for real numbers, including what happens under sustained load, a 10x burst, a memory ceiling, a mid-flight crash, multi-tenant fairness, and capacity/drain time by machine size.

Retry-After backs off exponentially under sustained pressure. A single rejection returns your configured base value (default 5s). Each additional consecutive rejection — with no allowed request in between — doubles it: 5s → 10s → 20s → 40s → capped at 60s. The moment a request is allowed again, it resets to the base. This exists so that clients retrying into a sustained overload spread out over time instead of all hammering the same fixed 5-second ceiling forever, which is exactly the pattern that keeps an overloaded instance from ever catching up.

Framework adapters

Aquifer has a framework-neutral core and adapter front doors. The core owns idempotency, persistence, rate control, dispatch, SSE events, L8 signing, and webhook delivery. Adapters translate framework-specific calls into that core.

type FrameworkAdapter interface {
    Name() string
    Start(ctx context.Context, aquifer *Aquifer) error
}

Current adapters:

Run as an MCP stdio server:

AQUIFER_ADAPTER=mcp-stdio aquifer

The published Docker image defaults to AQUIFER_ADAPTER=mcp-stdio so MCP directories such as Glama can start and introspect it directly. Set AQUIFER_ADAPTER=http when running Aquifer as an HTTP queue service.

MCP tools:

MCP resources:

The HTTP adapter remains the default so existing deployments do not change.

Writing an adapter

Adapter authors import Aquifer as a Go package, implement FrameworkAdapter, and pass the shared core into their framework. Built-in adapters are selected with AQUIFER_ADAPTER; third-party adapters normally ship as small custom binaries that call aquifer.RunAdapter.

package myframework

import (
    "context"

    "github.com/rjpruitt16/aquifer"
)

type Adapter struct{}

func (a *Adapter) Name() string {
    return "my-mcp-framework"
}

func (a *Adapter) Start(ctx context.Context, app *aquifer.Aquifer) error {
    // Register framework handlers that call:
    // app.Enqueue(req)
    // app.GetJob(jobID)
    // app.SubscribeJob(jobID)
    // app.Health()
    return nil
}

Custom binaries can reuse Aquifer's runtime wiring:

package main

import (
    "context"
    "log"

    "github.com/rjpruitt16/aquifer"
    myadapter "github.com/you/your-adapter"
)

func main() {
    runtime := aquifer.NewRuntime(aquifer.RuntimeOptions{
        DBPath:     "aquifer.db",
        ConfigPath: "aquifer.yml",
    })
    runtime.RecoverQueuedJobs("aquifer.db")

    adapter := myadapter.New()
    log.Fatal(adapter.Start(context.Background(), runtime.Aquifer))
}

For the shortest form, let Aquifer create the runtime and start your adapter:

adapter := myadapter.New()
log.Fatal(aquifer.RunAdapter(context.Background(), adapter, aquifer.RuntimeOptions{
    DBPath:     "aquifer.db",
    ConfigPath: "aquifer.yml",
}))

See examples/custom_adapter for a complete compile-tested adapter binary.

Metrics adapter

Aquifer emits lifecycle events through a pluggable metrics adapter. Implement MetricsAdapter and pass it into NewRegistry:

type MetricsAdapter interface {
    JobQueued(userID, upstream string)
    JobDispatched(userID, upstream string)
    JobCompleted(userID, upstream string, durationMs int64)
    JobFailed(userID, upstream string, reason string)
    WebhookDelivered(url string, attempt int)
    WebhookFailed(url string, attempts int)
    QueueDepth(upstream string, depth int)
    FlowRate(upstream string, rps float64)
}

Aquifer ships with NoopMetricsAdapter, so existing deployments do not change.

API

POST /jobs

{
  "user_id":        "user-123",
  "idempotent_key": "invoice-42-notify",
  "url":            "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions",
  "method":         "POST",
  "headers":        { "Authorization": "Bearer sk-..." },
  "body":           "{\"model\":\"gpt-4o\",\"messages\":[...]}",
  "webhook_url":    "https://yourapp.com/webhooks/aquifer"
}

Idempotent — duplicate idempotent_key per user_id returns the existing job.

201 new job queued · 200 + "duplicate": true already exists

GET /jobs/:id

{
  "job_id":     "a3f9...",
  "status":     "queued | in_flight | completed | failed",
  "url":        "https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions",
  "method":     "POST",
  "created_at": 1715000000000
}

GET /jobs/:id/stream

Server-Sent Events stream for live job updates.

event: queued
data: {"job_id":"a3f9...","status":"queued"}

event: dispatching
data: {"job_id":"a3f9..."}

event: completed
data: {"job_id":"a3f9...","response_status":200,"body":"..."}

Or event: failed with {"job_id":"...","reason":"..."}.

Position updates — while the job waits in queue, a position event is broadcast every 2 seconds:

event: position
data: {"job_id":"a3f9...","position":4}

curl -N http://localhost:8080/jobs/<id>/stream

Connecting late is safe — you'll receive synthetic queued and dispatching catchup events for states you missed.

The Aqueduct Protocol — SSE is the live view. Webhook is the guaranteed delivery. Both always fire regardless of whether the stream was open. Think of it like a phone call with voicemail: stay on the line (SSE) for real-time updates, or hang up and the result goes to voicemail (webhook). You never lose the result.

GET /health

{
  "status": "ok",
  "l8_protocol": "0.1",
  "l8_public_key": "...",
  "admission": {
    "enabled": true,
    "memory_mb": 42,
    "memory_limit_mb": 400,
    "max_body_bytes": 1048576,
    "db_bytes": 81920,
    "db_max_bytes": 104857600,
    "retry_after_seconds": 5
  }
}

admission.enabled is false (with only that key present) when none of the AQUIFER_* admission env vars are set.

Webhook payload

Completed

{
  "job_id":          "a3f9...",
  "status":          "completed",
  "response_status": 200,
  "body":            "..."
}

Failed (after 4 retries with exponential backoff)

{
  "job_id": "a3f9...",
  "status": "failed",
  "reason": "connection refused"
}

Webhook delivery retries 4 times: 1 s · 2 s · 4 s · 8 s.

L8 Protocol — trustless webhook delivery

Traditional webhook security requires sharing a secret between sender and receiver and storing it in a database on both sides. Aquifer implements L8 v0.1, a lightweight challenge-response protocol that eliminates shared secrets entirely.

The attack surface problem L8 solves: A shared HMAC secret is something that can be stolen, accidentally logged, forgotten to rotate, or compromised on either side. A stolen secret lets anyone forge webhook deliveries forever. L8 replaces that shared secret with public key cryptography — there is no secret to steal from a database.

How it works:

1. The receiver publishes a public key at GET /.well-known/l8
2. Before the first delivery, Aquifer challenges the receiver to prove ownership of the corresponding private key — a one-time handshake
3. Trust is cached to disk as l8-trust/{domain}.json — the handshake never runs again for that domain
4. Every webhook delivery carries X-L8-Signature headers the receiver verifies locally with no database lookup and no round-trip to any authority

Why this keeps things fast: Verification is a single local Ed25519 verify() call against a cached public key. No database query, no HTTP call, no shared state. Microseconds.

Key management:

Set L8_PRIVATE_KEY (base64 Ed25519 private key) for a stable identity across restarts. Without it, Aquifer auto-generates a key and saves it to .l8-key on first start.

To revoke trust with a domain: delete l8-trust/{domain}.json. The handshake re-runs on next delivery.

Aquifer exposes:

Protocol version: 0.1. The version is advertised in /.well-known/l8 and GET /health so agents can detect what capabilities are available. Future versions will add payload encryption (0.2) and formalized key rotation (0.3).

The full protocol spec and verification examples are in L8-SPEC.md, also browsable at GET /l8-spec on any running instance. The spec documents the receiver-side endpoints any service needs to implement to receive signed webhooks.

See tests/l8_receiver.py for a complete reference implementation of the receiver side, and tests/test_l8.py for end-to-end tests that verify the handshake, signed delivery, and cryptographic signature validation.

Dynamic Pacing

The upstream controls pace at runtime via response headers. X-Aqueduct-* is the protocol namespace; X-Aquifer-* remains supported as a backward-compatible product alias.

With X-Aqueduct-Account-Queue: enabled, each (user_id, api_key) pair gets its own independently paced queue. One tenant's burst can't slow down another.

Aquifer reads both namespaces, preferring X-Aqueduct-* when both are present:

Dynamic pacing is useful for your own servers because it lets them shed pressure gradually while still making progress. A backend can lower RPS when CPU, queue depth, database latency, or downstream dependency pressure rises; Aquifer will honor that lower pace immediately, and then recover gradually toward the configured ceiling when pressure clears.

Autoscaling

Aquifer sends machine load data as headers on every outgoing request to your service. It sends both X-Aqueduct-* and X-Aquifer-* names for compatibility.

Your service reads these headers and calls your autoscaler when the queue is growing:

total_jobs = int(request.headers.get("X-Aqueduct-Total-Jobs", 0))

if total_jobs > 500:
    scale_up()  # call Fly.io, AWS ASG, k8s HPA, etc.

This keeps the autoscaling decision in your hands — Aquifer exposes the signal, your service acts on it however fits your infrastructure.

Reliability

• Durable queue — jobs persist to SQLite on every write
• Crash recovery — queued jobs re-dispatched automatically on restart
• In-flight tracking — jobs marked in_flight before dispatch; recovered immediately on panic without waiting for full restart
• Stale job safety net — in-flight jobs older than 5 min automatically reset to queued
• Per-job panic isolation — a panic in one job marks it failed and delivers the webhook; the worker keeps running

Job TTLs

Deployment model

Aquifer is designed as a sidecar on a single machine. One instance per app server, SQLite on a local persistent volume — no external database, no coordination overhead.

Running multiple instances against the same upstream without partitioning will multiply your request rate. If you scale horizontally, partition by upstream domain or tenant so each instance owns a distinct key space.

Do not expose Aquifer directly to untrusted callers. POST /jobs takes a url field and dispatches a real HTTP request to it — if an arbitrary or untrusted party can set that field, Aquifer becomes an open relay/SSRF vector: it can be pointed at your internal network, cloud metadata endpoints (169.254.169.254), or anything else the machine Aquifer runs on can reach, using Aquifer's own network position and identity. The intended caller is your own trusted backend or gateway code, dispatching to a specific microservice or third-party API it already knows about — not an agent, end user, or any other untrusted party choosing the destination itself. Run Aquifer on a private network or internal service mesh, not bound to a public address, and if agents need to reach it, put your own authorization and destination allow-listing in front rather than letting them call Aquifer's raw API directly.

Choosing a machine size

Real measurements from benchmark.md: testing across 256MB/512MB/1024MB and separately across 1/2/4 shared vCPUs on Fly.io, every configuration broke at the identical ~200 req/s point. That turned out not to be a hardware ceiling at all — it was a single hardcoded SQLite connection (SetMaxOpenConns(1)) serializing every request through one handle regardless of machine size, plus a related bug where SQLite pragmas were silently not applied to any connection beyond the first. Both are fixed now (see benchmark.md for the full story), and 200 req/s went from a hard, repeatable failure to a usually-clean, occasionally-marginal rate. 400 req/s is a real ceiling post-fix (memory climbs genuinely, not just connection-pool noise).

Checklist for picking a size:

• Traffic sustains under ~200 req/s? Any size works, including 256MB — this workload's bottleneck wasn't CPU or RAM at that range.
• Traffic sustains above ~200-300 req/s? Re-run benchmark/capacity_by_size.sh against your own traffic shape and instance type before assuming a bigger box fixes it — verify the ceiling is actually hardware-bound first, not a code-level one, the way this one turned out to be.
• Bursts happen but are followed by quiet periods? A 500-job burst drains in about 75-79s at a 50 RPS dispatch pace, regardless of machine size — scale that linearly against your own CONFIG_PATH rate to estimate your own catch-up time.
• A capacity ceiling looks identical no matter what you scale? That's a strong signal it's not the resource you're scaling — treat it as a code-path question, not a bigger-machine question.
• Need genuine per-tenant fairness under a shared upstream? Set X-Aqueduct-Account-Queue: enabled — see Dynamic Pacing above.

License

MIT