The ClusterSingletonProxy works together with the pekko.cluster.singleton.ClusterSingletonManager to provide a distributed proxy to the singleton actor.

The proxy can be started on every node where the singleton needs to be reached and used as if it were the singleton itself. It will then act as a router to the currently running singleton instance. If the singleton is not currently available, e.g., during hand off or startup, the proxy will buffer the messages sent to the singleton and then deliver them when the singleton is finally available. The size of the buffer is configurable and it can be disabled by using a buffer size of 0. When the buffer is full old messages will be dropped when new messages are sent via the proxy.

The proxy works by keeping track of the oldest cluster member. When a new oldest member is identified, e.g. because the older one left the cluster, or at startup, the proxy will try to identify the singleton on the oldest member by periodically sending an pekko.actor.Identify message until the singleton responds with its pekko.actor.ActorIdentity.

Note that this is a best effort implementation: messages can always be lost due to the distributed nature of the actors involved.