Introduction

Table of contents

  1. The Problem
    1. Current Go Ecosystem Gaps
  2. Why Event Sourcing?
    1. Event Sourcing Benefits
  3. go-mink’s Goals
    1. Primary Goals
    2. Design Principles
  4. Target Audience
  5. Success Metrics

The Problem

Building Event Sourcing systems in Go today requires significant boilerplate code:

// Typical boilerplate you write today:
type EventStore interface {
    Append(ctx context.Context, streamID string, events []Event) error
    Load(ctx context.Context, streamID string) ([]Event, error)
}

type Event struct {
    ID        string
    Type      string
    Data      []byte
    Metadata  map[string]string
    Timestamp time.Time
    Version   int64
}

// Then you implement for each database...
// Then you build projections manually...
// Then you handle concurrency...
// Then you build read models...
// Then you handle retries...
// Then you build migrations...

Current Go Ecosystem Gaps

Gap Impact
No unified library Teams reinvent the wheel
Fragmented solutions Combine 5+ libraries for full ES
Manual projections Error-prone, time-consuming
No schema management Manual migration scripts
Limited multi-tenancy Custom implementation required
Poor developer UX Steep learning curve

Why Event Sourcing? 

Traditional CRUD:                     Event Sourcing:
┌─────────────────┐                  ┌─────────────────┐
│  Current State  │                  │  Event 1        │
│  (overwritten)  │                  │  Event 2        │
└─────────────────┘                  │  Event 3        │
                                     │  ...            │
                                     │  Event N        │
                                     └─────────────────┘
                                            │
                                     ┌──────▼──────┐
                                     │ Rebuild to  │
                                     │ any state   │
                                     └─────────────┘

Event Sourcing Benefits

  • Complete Audit Trail: Every change is recorded
  • Temporal Queries: “What was the state on March 15th?”
  • Debug Production: Replay events locally
  • Event Replay: Fix bugs by reprocessing events
  • Decoupled Systems: Events enable loose coupling

go-mink’s Goals

Primary Goals

  1. Zero Boilerplate: Write business logic, not infrastructure
  2. Pluggable Storage: PostgreSQL today, MongoDB tomorrow
  3. Automatic Projections: Define once, update automatically
  4. Developer Experience: CLI tools, testing utilities, clear errors
  5. Production Ready: Battle-tested patterns, observability built-in

Design Principles

Principle Implementation
Convention over Configuration Sensible defaults, override when needed
Explicit over Implicit No magic, clear data flow
Composition over Inheritance Interfaces and embedding
Fail Fast Validate early, clear error messages
Observable by Default Metrics, tracing, logging hooks

Target Audience

  • Startups: Ship event-sourced systems fast
  • Enterprise: Reliable audit trails and compliance
  • Platform Teams: Standardized ES infrastructure
  • Solo Developers: Learn ES without complexity

Success Metrics

Metric Target
Lines of code to get started < 20
Time to first event stored < 5 minutes
Projection definition < 10 lines
Database adapter switch Config change only

Next: Architecture →