Build a Distributed Consensus Protocol

Build a Raft-style consensus protocol implementation from first principles.

Core requirements:

1. Leader election with randomized timeouts
2. Log replication
3. Snapshotting
4. Cluster membership changes
5. Custom RPC layer
6. Write-ahead log
7. Index structures
8. Metrics and tracing
9. Kubernetes manifests

Deliverables: GitHub repo, tests, demo cluster, documentation.