𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝗿𝗲𝘁 𝗧𝗼 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗠𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘀 You build a chatbot to answer user questions. But what if the API you use times out or returns errors?
- Your chatbot becomes unresponsive
- Users get frustrated
- You lose trust
I built a chatbot that used an LLM API. But it kept timing out. I tried different API providers, but the issue persisted. Then I realized the problem was not the provider, but how I was calling them.
To fix this, I used a three-layer approach:
- Retry with backoff: respect rate limits and transient errors
- Circuit breaker: stop hammering a failing endpoint
- Fallback to a different model: if the primary API is down, switch to a backup
This approach made my chatbot more reliable. I learned that you should not assume any API is