#reliability
6 pieces filed under “reliability”.
Every AI feature needs a kill switch
Config-driven disable paths, graceful degradation, incident comms for model-caused bugs, provider outage posture, and the quarterly drill where you flip the switch.
Queuing writes for a flaky world
Offline writes done honestly: outbox queues, idempotency keys, optimistic state that admits it's pending, conflict surfacing, and deciding which features truly need them.
Errors are design material: engineering graceful failure
Failures are part of the product, not exceptions to it. Typed errors, retry policies, circuit breakers and writing the failure copy in the same sprint as the happy path.
Rate limits are a UX surface, not just middleware
Rate limiting starts in middleware but ends in the interface. Retry-After contracts, queue positions, backpressure UX and the copy that keeps users calm.
Error boundaries: designing UI that fails gracefully
Error boundaries are a product decision, not a try/catch. Granularity, fallbacks that save user work, retry semantics and reporting that actually gets read.
Background jobs: boring patterns that save your weekend
Queues vs cron, idempotency, dead-letter queues and backpressure — the boring background-job patterns that keep small teams asleep at 3am.