Prevent Duplicate Request Processing

Quick Overview

This System Design question evaluates understanding of idempotency, request deduplication, client- and server-side reliability mechanisms, and concurrency control in distributed systems.

Prevent Duplicate Request Processing

Company: OpenAI

Role: Software Engineer

Category: System Design

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: HR Screen

A client accidentally sends the same network request twice, for example because the user double-clicked a button, the client retried after a timeout, or the network duplicated a request. Design a reliable way to prevent the operation from being processed twice. Explain both client-side and server-side mechanisms, and describe how your design handles concurrent duplicate requests.

Quick Answer: This System Design question evaluates understanding of idempotency, request deduplication, client- and server-side reliability mechanisms, and concurrency control in distributed systems.

|Home/System Design/OpenAI
OpenAI logo
OpenAI
Apr 4, 2026, 12:00 AM
hardSoftware EngineerHR ScreenSystem Design
28
0

A client accidentally sends the same network request twice, for example because the user double-clicked a button, the client retried after a timeout, or the network duplicated a request.

Design a reliable way to prevent the operation from being processed twice. Explain both client-side and server-side mechanisms, and describe how your design handles concurrent duplicate requests.

Submit Your Answer to Earn 20XP

Sign in to leave a comment

Loading comments...