Design a Cross-Product Tagging System System Design Interview

1. Problem Statement

2. Architecture Discussion Map

Use this as one discussion aid, not a single correct answer. Your design should follow from the requirements, scale, and trade-offs you establish.

graph LR
    A["Design a Cross-Product Tagging System"]
    A --> F1["Tag entity model canonical tags, aliases, namespacing"]
    A --> F2["Tagging API across multiple entity types issues, pages, repos"]
    A --> F3["Tag normalization and deduplication"]
    A --> F4["Search by tag full-text, prefix, faceted"]
    A --> F5["Eventual consistency when entities are deleted or merged"]
    A --> F6["Scale - tag fan-out and reverse index"]

3. Key Focus Areas

• 1
  Tag entity model (canonical tags, aliases, namespacing)
• 2
  Tagging API across multiple entity types (issues, pages, repos)
• 3
  Tag normalization and deduplication
• 4
  Search by tag (full-text, prefix, faceted)
• 5
  Eventual consistency when entities are deleted or merged
• 6
  Scale: tag fan-out and reverse index