Use SOF

Use this section when the goal is to decide whether SOF belongs in your service, and if it does, how to run it honestly.

At the highest level:

• sof is the observer/runtime
• sof-tx is the execution and submission SDK
• sof-gossip-tuning is the typed tuning layer for sof

This section is for:

• teams evaluating SOF against RPC, managed providers, validators, or their own ingest stack
• operators choosing between direct UDP, gossip, private raw ingress, or processed providers
• services combining local observation with local submission

Read These First

1. Why SOF Exists
2. SOF Compared To The Usual Alternatives
3. Choose the Right SOF Path
4. Before You Start
5. Common Questions

Then Use The Pages By Job

• control-plane sourcing
  • Choose Your Control Plane Source
• service shape
  • Build An Observer Service
  • Build One Process That Observes And Submits
  • Build A Live-Only Stream Service
• recipes and practical choices
  • Common Recipes
  • Getting Started
  • Operations

What This Track Assumes

• ingress choice matters more than slogans about being "fast"
• SOF is most useful when you want one reusable runtime instead of rebuilding the same Solana ingest and correctness machinery in every service

For the actual ingress/latency mental model, use Before You Start.

Repository-internal material lives under Maintain SOF.