Scaling front-end platforms with Server Driven UI | Architecture Deep Dive #1

Fwdays Tech Talks

Welcome to the first episode of Architecture Deep Dive with Oleksii Petrov! In today’s podcast, our guest — Oleksii Levzhynskyi, Area Tech Lead at Grammarly. In this episode, we dive into the role of an Area Tech Lead and explore the challenges of scaling frontend platforms. Oleksii explains what platform scaling really means, how Server-Driven UI (SDUI) works, and where it fits in modern architecture. We talk about strategies for unification, balancing client-server responsibilities, component design, and how Grammarly approaches SDUI across platforms. What you should subscribe to: – More interesting content for developers: https://fwdays.com/en/events – Fwdays Twitter: https://twitter.com/fwdays – Oleksii Petrov's Telegram channel: https://t.me/OleksiiTheArchitect – Oleksii Petrov's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhelkar/ – Oleksii Levzhynskyi's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oleksiilevzhynskyi/ Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 00:59 - Introduction of the guest 01:55 - What does an Area Tech Lead do? 05:35 - What does "scaling" mean in the context of frontend platforms and how does it happen? 08:07 - Does adding support of a new platform also means to scale the platform? 10:44 - What are the strategies and approaches to platform scaling and unification? 17:56 - What is Server-Driven UI, and why is it needed? 20:48 - Where is the boundary in SDUI: How to split responsibilities between client and server? 23:03 - Server-Driven UI Architecture: Where can we use it? 31:40 - Components and their integration 35:46 - SDUI vs New UI Concepts 38:17 - What level of abstraction do you use, and what components do you include in the response? 41:19 - How do you describe dependencies and interactions between components in SDUI? 44:56 - How did you handle the balance between client-side and server-side logic/events/rendering? 47:20 - Which platforms at Grammarly use Server-Driven UI? 48:44 - Do you use a custom schema protocol for Server-Driven UI? 51:20 - Impressions and takeaways after working with SDUI 54:36 - What’s the next step in Grammarly’s architectural evolution? 56:39 - Pushing mobile changes without review: Is it possible with SDUI? 59:30 - Advice for teams facing similar challenges