- In short
- Layered reliability controls place retries, fallback chains, and circuit breakers at the correct layer of the call stack so each protects the failure it targets. Retries with exponential backoff belong close to the individual API call, to recover from transient errors like rate limits and timeouts. Fallback chains belong in the orchestration layer, routing to an alternative model tier or cached response instead of surfacing an error. Circuit breakers belong at the service boundary, tripping when a downstream dependency error rate exceeds a threshold so requests fail fast. A control at the wrong layer protects the wrong part of the system.
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