- Create PROTOCOL_COMPATIBILITY_REVIEW.md documenting all compatibility issues
- Add critical TODOs to most problematic protocol implementations:
* Produce: Record batch parsing is simplified, missing compression/CRC
* Offset management: Hardcoded 'test-topic' parsing breaks real clients
* JoinGroup: Consumer subscription extraction hardcoded, incomplete parsing
* Fetch: Fake record batch construction with dummy data
* Handler: Missing API version validation across all endpoints
- Identify high/medium/low priority fixes needed for real client compatibility
- Document specific areas needing work:
* Record format parsing (v0/v1/v2, compression, CRC validation)
* Request parsing (topics arrays, partition arrays, protocol metadata)
* Consumer group protocol metadata parsing
* Connection metadata extraction
* Error code accuracy
- Add testing recommendations for kafka-go, Sarama, Java clients
- Provide roadmap for Phase 4 protocol compliance improvements
This review is essential before attempting integration with real Kafka clients
as current simplified implementations will fail with actual client libraries.