Failure Handling

What counts as a failure?

• Infrastructure errors: 5xx, timeouts, DNS/network issues → trip the breaker
• 408 Request Timeout → trips the breaker (treated as an infrastructure timeout)
• 429 Too Many Requests → trips the breaker (treated as a backend capacity issue)
• Other 4xx business errors (400, 401, 403, 404, 422, etc.) → ignored, do not affect the breaker

Breaker states

• Closed — normal operation
• Open — integration temporarily blocked
• Half-open — testing if backend has recovered