Sequence · Diagram Design

# Article request, cold cache

How a content site serves a reader when the requested slug isn't already sitting in Cloudflare's edge cache — origin render, beacon, and back in one round trip.

THE HEADLINE

### Edge handles the hot path

On subsequent reads the whole exchange collapses to M1 → M5. Cloudflare serves the cached HTML without waking the origin. The coral arrow is the only one the reader ever perceives.

### Origin render on miss

- Astro SSRs MDX on cold cache
- Returns HTML + cache headers
- Edge stores the result
- Next reader skips the origin trip

### Analytics is fire-and-forget

The pageview beacon is dashed for a reason: the reader never waits on it, and a failed beacon never breaks the page.