A fixed-width, time-ordered identifier — with routing, node identity, and integrity baked into the bits.

What a Snowflake ID is

Snowflake is a family of fixed-width binary identifiers built for distributed systems: chronologically sortable, locally unique without coordination, and small enough to use as a primary key. Six variants trade size for capability — from a 64-bit embedded ID to a 128-bit form that carries its own geographic routing hint and node signature.

• Fixed-width — no variable-length parsing
• Time-ordered — sorts correctly as bytes, no decoding needed
• Locally unique — node + sequence, no central allocator
• Route-aware — an optional embedded geohash/shard prefix
• Node-authentic — HMAC-derived node identity, not a random UUID segment
• Integrity-checked — parity or CRC in every variant

Pick a width

Bar length is proportional to bit width. Select a row for its field layout, bit math, and a worked example.

Text encodings

Raw Snowflakes are binary. For logs, URLs, and human transcription, encode them as Base32, Base58, or a radix-aligned custom form.

Base32 encodes 5-bit chunks, so encoded length is ⌈bits ÷ 5⌉ characters — a full SF128 payload runs 26 Base32 characters before punctuation.

Decoding an SF128-GS identifier

Same byte-to-field coloring as the hero. This is a real, bit-accurate 128-bit value:

from snowflake import SF128
sf = SF128.new(timestamp, geohash, node_id, seq)
encoded = sf.encode()

let sf = Snowflake::new(
    timestamp_mjd_us(),
    geohash_prefix(),
    hmac_node_id(key, nonce),
    seq_or_checksum(),
);
let bytes = sf.to_bytes();

SELECT (id >> 88) AS mjd_us,
       ((id >> 64) & x'FFFFFF') AS node_id
FROM snowflakes;

The same 128 bits, four symbologies

These aren’t mockups — they’re real output from this project’s own encoder, each one independently scannable with commodity readers. Same payload as the worked example above: 5300010003bda92d41a73cc9f0a1427f.

QR

ERROR_CORRECT_H

DataMatrix

ECC 200

PDF417

rotated 90°

EAN128

GS1-128, AI (90)

Built to compress

SF128-LOG trades the geo/HMAC fields for a lower-entropy layout — host delta, service ID, relative timestamp offset, counter, parity — tuned for log ingest where every byte is repeated across millions of lines.