Server-Sent Events (SSE)
A standard way for a server to push a stream of updates to the browser over one long HTTP response.
The browser opens a connection with EventSource and the server keeps writing lines of text: progress, notifications, tokens from a language model. It is one-way, plain HTTP, and reconnects by itself. WebSockets are two-way and need their own protocol; when only the server talks, SSE is simpler and passes through proxies more easily.
Related terms
- Event loop: How JavaScript runs one task at a time and queues the rest: callbacks, promises (microtasks), timers and rendering.
- Durable Objects: Cloudflare’s single-instance objects with their own storage: one place in the world that owns a piece of state.
- Webhook: An HTTP request one system sends to another when something happens, instead of the other system asking repeatedly.
