The problem PostgreSQL's bytea type is powerful for storing raw binary data, but it carries no type information. Once you store a value as bytes, you need out-of-band metadata to know whether those bytes represent a number, a UUID, a timestamp, or a JSON object. This gets painful when you're building dynamic schemas — EAV tables, schemaless document stores, or audit logs — where a single column holds values of different types. You end up carrying a separate type column everywhere, writing CASE expressions to decode it, and hoping they stay in sync. pg_ilib solves this with a simple idea: prefix every serialized value with a 2-byte typed header. The format Byte 0: [ op_id (4 bits) | params_hi (4 bits) ] Byte 1: [ params_lo (8 bits) ] Bytes 2…N: payload Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode The op_id identifies the type. The params field carries type-specific metadata: decimal scale for numerics, timezone offset in minutes for timestamps.…