Imagine building a platform that starts small—clean, efficient, and focused. But as adoption grows, external teams begin knocking: “Can we integrate Feature X?” “How about supporting Protocol Y?” Each request feels urgent, and saying “no” isn’t an option. Before long, your core platform risks becoming a tangled mess of custom integrations, slowing development to a crawl.

This is where the Echidna architecture shines. Inspired by the spiny mammal’s adaptive defenses, the pattern encourages wrapping your core platform with modular “spikes”—lightweight APIs and hooks that act as controlled entry points. Instead of bending your platform to meet every external demand, you let stakeholders plug into these spikes. Need to support a new API standard? Add a spike. A third-party tool integration? Another spike. The core remains untouched, stable, and fast.

In this talk, we’ll walk through:

* The inflection point: When scaling demands force teams to choose between speed and flexibility
* Spikes in action: How APIs and hooks create safe, scalable interaction layers
* Real-world lessons: Balancing stakeholder needs without technical debt
* The payoff: Faster iterations, happier developers, and a platform that evolves with its ecosystem

By the end, you’ll see how Echidna turns integration chaos into a structured, sustainable strategy—keeping your platform nimble, no matter how many requests come knocking.

Echidna Architecture is a pattern i came up with, helping several customers in keeping their platforms, or SaaS products in general, agile yet flexible to change