Loading…
The Cloudflare Blog – Brought to you by EmDash
CloudflareKody Jackson
Summary
Cloudflare migrated its official blog to EmDash, an Astro-focused content management system, acting as internal Customer Zero to evaluate scaling and usability. To prepare for traffic spikes reaching thousands of requests per second, engineers used k6 to execute ramp, breakpoint, and burst load tests. The resulting production architecture runs EmDash on Cloudflare Workers, pairing it with Workers Cache, an object cache backed by Workers KV, and Hyperdrive connected to PlanetScale. This layered caching design serves 99.5 percent of static files and 70 percent of requests from cache, flattening p95 latency under real-world loads reaching 850 requests per second. The migration also introduced a frontend redesign using the Kumo design system and added Model Context Protocol servers for automated agent workflows.
Context
The Cloudflare Blog faced platform limitations with its existing CMS vendor and needed to handle erratic traffic patterns that routinely spiked from a baseline of 75 requests per second to over 5,000 requests per second, while acting as Customer Zero to validate the pre-1.0 EmDash platform.
Approach / What changed
Engineers validated EmDash with usability audits and k6 performance testing up to 7,000 requests per second. They deployed the CMS to Cloudflare Workers using Workers Cache, a Workers KV object cache, and Hyperdrive connected to PlanetScale, followed by a phased traffic rollout from 1% to 100% and the integration of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for agent workflows.
Takeaways
- A multi-layer caching architecture combining Workers Cache and a Workers KV object cache served 99.5% of static files and 70% of requests from cache, eliminating p95 latency spikes.
- Load testing with k6 evaluated availability and latency under 7,000 RPS bursts, enforcing strict thresholds of under 0.01% 5xx errors and sub-500ms p95 response times.
- The platform integrated Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling external agents to query posts and allowing authors to create, edit, and schedule content via agentic tooling.
Related reading
The next generation of MCP
Model Context Protocol previously required stateful connections between clients and remote servers, creating operational complexity around sticky sessions, message replay, and open streams. The newly released MCP 2026-07-28 specification transitions MCP to a fully stateless protocol alongside updated SDKs across TypeScript, Python, Go, and C#. The protocol eliminates mandatory handshakes and session identifiers from core request paths while enabling servers to run on request-scoped infrastructure like Cloudflare Workers. Interactive elicitation is restructured through Multi Round-Trip Requests, which allow servers to return input requirements without sustaining persistent connections. Standardized headers for method names and improved OAuth authorization mechanisms further enable standard web infrastructure to inspect and manage MCP traffic efficiently.
Matt CareyUnveiling good and bad behaviors on the Agentic Internet
Web traffic increasingly shifts between human interaction and automated agents, rendering point-in-time security checks ineffective against sophisticated automation. Cloudflare addresses this shift through continuous behavioral analysis designed to evaluate trust across entire user sessions rather than relying on static point-in-time hurdles. Its CDN-injected client-side system, Precursor, tracks continuous behavioral indicators like cursor movements to catch mid-session automated takeovers. To counter rapid bot adaptation, Cloudflare is introducing self-adjusting machine learning models under Adaptive Intelligence and non-deterministic defenses such as the AI Labyrinth. These tools allow site owners to poison scraper training data, trap crawlers in synthetic webs, or queue legitimate agents while dynamically penalizing abusive traffic.
Jin-Hee LeeHow Cloudflare detects MCP traffic and helps secure it
Traditional security boundaries assume human speed and judgment, but AI agents execute nondeterministic actions rapidly and can invoke unapproved Model Context Protocol servers through standard HTTPS traffic. To mitigate this shadow traffic, Cloudflare One introduces detection and inspection capabilities across clients, network boundaries, and MCP servers. Cloudflare Gateway leverages protocol-level headers and JSON-RPC inspection to identify direct MCP connections, verify managed paths, and enforce access through approved MCP Server Portals. Furthermore, Cloudflare Agents SDK v0.20.0 implements the stateless 2026-07-28 MCP specification while providing fallback handshakes for legacy servers. Organizations can combine Gateway traffic source rules with server middleware like WriteGuard to block unauthorized tool invocations before execution.
AJ GerstenhaberSecure all your internal vibe-coded applications — in one click
AI-assisted development enables employees to build applications rapidly, but unmanaged deployments can accidentally expose internal company data to the public Internet. Cloudflare introduced direct Cloudflare Access integration for Cloudflare Workers, allowing organizations to enforce authentication policies directly at the account or individual Worker level rather than per hostname. When enabled, incoming requests are authenticated before reaching application code across custom domains, routes, workers.dev subdomains, and preview environments. Developers can access authenticated identity data such as emails and groups directly via the Worker context object without manually validating JSON Web Tokens. This capability was implemented on Cloudflare's Rust-based FL2 proxy, which separated Worker routing from Worker execution so routing runs safely prior to Access policy enforcement.
Chythra Malapati