🧭 Scenario · Make the call
The home server friends can't reach
The situation
You run a small game server on your laptop at home. Everyone on your home wifi can join it instantly. But when a friend across town tries to connect from the internet — using your home's public address — their connection just hangs and times out. Your laptop is on, the server is running, and you've even found your home's public address. From the outside, though, it's as if the server isn't there at all.
You haven't read about this exact system. That's the point — walk the three questions a designer asks: what's really wrong, what fixes it, and what does the fix cost?
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Diagnose
Read past the story. What's the REAL problem — not what the feature does, but what's actually going wrong?
Look past the story. What's the REAL problem here?