Tavern

A self-hosted HTTP cache for CDN edge delivery and origin protection.
Collapse duplicate origin fetches, serve partial content efficiently, and operate cache nodes as one focused Go service.

Documentation · Example configuration · Changelog · 简体中文

Overview

Tavern is a reverse caching proxy for CDN edge and origin-shield workloads. Deploy it behind a gateway or load balancer to serve reusable responses locally, absorb concurrent cache misses, and prevent object expiry from becoming an origin traffic spike.

Note

Tavern owns the object delivery and cache lifecycle layer. It is not a DNS service, global traffic scheduler, API gateway, or CDN control plane.

Clients
│
▼
Gateway / Load Balancer
│
▼
Tavern ── cache hit ───────────────► Response
│
└──── controlled fetch/revalidation ──► Origin

Tavern is delivered as a CGO-free Go binary and configured with YAML. Run it as a single cache node or repeat the same service across an edge fleet.

Why Tavern?

Focus	What Tavern does	Operational result
Origin protection	Collapses concurrent full-object misses and merges concurrent Range misses into one union fetch; refreshes objects before hard expiry	Fewer duplicate origin requests and smoother revalidation traffic
Partial-content delivery	Caches single, suffix, open-ended, and multi-range requests; reuses cached slices and fills missing ranges	Less redundant transfer for downloads, packages, and media objects
Explicit cache lifecycle	Supports URL or directory PURGE, soft expiry or hard deletion, bounded Vary variants, eviction, and storage tiering	Predictable invalidation and storage behavior
Cache-node operations	Exposes Prometheus metrics, health and profiling endpoints, structured logs, live terminal views, and graceful binary handover	Fewer surrounding components are needed to operate a node

These capabilities also exist in different forms across NGINX, Varnish, Squid, and Apache Traffic Server. Tavern's focus is their integration in a compact, Go-native edge cache—not a claim that every individual feature is unique.

Quick start

Requirements

• Go 1.26+
• Linux or macOS
• An HTTP origin for cacheable content

Build and run

git clone https://github.com/omalloc/tavern.git
cd tavern
cp config.example.yaml config.yaml
# Set upstream.address, storage paths, and log paths for this host.
make build
./bin/tavern -c config.yaml

In another terminal, verify the local administrative endpoints:

curl http://localhost:8080/healthz
curl http://localhost:8080/version
curl http://localhost:8080/metrics

After upstream.address points to a working origin, request the same cacheable URL twice and inspect X-Cache:

curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null http://localhost:8080/path/to/object
curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null http://localhost:8080/path/to/object
# The normal transition is MISS on the first request, then HIT.

The example configuration restricts administrative routes and PURGE to local hosts. Review local_api_allow_hosts, purge allow_hosts, PProf credentials, and filesystem paths before exposing a node.

Where Tavern fits

A good fit	Use another layer or product for
Origin shield or L2 cache behind an existing gateway	DNS, global traffic scheduling, or a managed CDN control plane
Range-heavy software, package, image, and media delivery	General API-gateway policy such as authentication and complex routing
Private edge networks requiring explicit purge and local storage control	Broad protocol support or a large runtime plugin ecosystem
Go infrastructure teams building custom middleware, storage, or control-plane integration	A drop-in replacement that must reuse NGINX, Varnish, Squid, or ATS configuration

Capabilities

Caching and origin control

• Collapsed forwarding for full-object misses and concurrent missing ranges
• Probabilistic asynchronous refresh before hard expiry
• Conditional revalidation with ETag / If-None-Match and Last-Modified / If-Modified-Since
• Header-triggered cache prefetch
• Dedicated upstream connection pools over TCP or Unix sockets

HTTP delivery

• Single-range, suffix-range, open-ended, and multi-range responses
• Partial cache hits and configurable missing-range fill
• Vary-aware variants with a configurable upper bound and ignored keys
• Optional query-string inclusion in cache keys
• Declarative request and response header rewriting
• Chunked object storage for incremental reads and writes

Invalidation and storage

• URL and directory-prefix PURGE
• Soft invalidation for later revalidation or hard deletion for immediate removal
• Source allowlists for invalidation requests
• Disk and memory buckets with hash-ring or round-robin placement
• FIFO, LRU, and LFU eviction policies
• Optional hot, warm, and cold promotion or demotion
• Persistent object metadata through PebbleDB or NutsDB

Extension points

• Composable http.RoundTripper middleware
• Built-in purge, query-stats, and integrity-verifier plugins
• Replaceable storage buckets, selectors, and index backends
• Compile-time registration through Go interfaces and init(); extensions are linked into the binary rather than loaded as runtime plugins

Configuration

Tavern uses one YAML configuration file. This excerpt shows the primary request and storage path; see config.example.yaml for all options.

server:
addr: ":8080"middleware:
- name: recovery
- name: multirange
- name: cachingoptions:
collapsed_request: truecollapsed_request_wait_timeout: 100msfuzzy_refresh: truefuzzy_refresh_rate: 0.1fill_range_percent: 100vary_limit: 100upstream:
address:
- http://127.0.0.1:8000storage:
driver: nativedb_type: pebbleeviction_policy: lruselection_policy: hashringslice_size: 1048576buckets:
- path: /var/lib/tavern/cachetype: normalmax_object_limit: 10000000

Invalidate cached objects

# Mark one object expired; the next request revalidates it.
curl -X PURGE http://localhost:8080/assets/app.js
# Delete one object immediately.
curl -X PURGE -H 'Purge-Type: file,hard' \
http://localhost:8080/assets/app.js
# Mark every object under a path expired.
curl -X PURGE -H 'Purge-Type: dir' \
http://localhost:8080/assets/

PURGE requests must come from an address configured in the plugin's allow_hosts list.

Operations

Interface	Purpose
/metrics	Prometheus cache, proxy, server, and storage metrics
/healthz / /version	Load-balancer health checks and build information
/debug/pprof/	Go runtime profiling, with optional Basic Auth
ttop	Live traffic rates, response codes, resource use, and hot URLs over SSE
tq	Access-log querying, including encrypted access logs
SIGUSR2	Graceful binary upgrade and listener handover through tableflip

Access logs are structured and can optionally be encrypted on disk. Administrative HTTP endpoints are controlled by local_api_allow_hosts.

Architecture

Tavern composes the request path from http.RoundTripper middleware. The upstream proxy is the innermost transport, while cache and delivery behavior remain independently replaceable.

HTTP Server
├── Local endpoints: metrics, health, version, PProf
├── Plugins: purge, query stats, integrity verifier
└── Request pipeline
├── Recovery
├── Rewrite
├── MultiRange
├── Caching
└── Upstream proxy
├── connection pooling
├── TCP / Unix socket transport
└── request coalescing
Caching
└── Storage selector
├── disk / memory buckets
├── optional hot / warm / cold migration
├── shared state for purge and counters
└── persistent object metadata

Development

Command	Purpose
make build	Build the static bin/tavern server binary
make toolchain	Build bin/tq and bin/ttop
make check	Run go vet and staticcheck
make generate	Regenerate protocol constants
go test -count=1 -v ./storage/...	Run a standalone package test suite
go test -count=1 -v ./...	Run all tests; integration tests require a running Tavern instance

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Keep changes focused, add tests beside the affected package, and run the relevant package tests before submitting a pull request.

Documentation

Document	Description
Documentation index	Entry point for project and ecosystem documentation
Ecosystem overview	Multi-layer CDN topology and request lifecycle
Feature reference	Cache, storage, purge, and operations behavior
Architecture	Middleware, proxy, storage, and plugin internals
PURGE design	Invalidation protocol and implementation
Grafana dashboard	Prometheus dashboard template

Ecosystem

• Tavern Gateway — an OpenResty-based L1/L3 gateway designed to complement Tavern as the L2 cache
• CRC-Center — external cache-file integrity verification used by the verifier plugin

License

Tavern is available under the terms of the MIT License.