Graceful degradation.
also: degrade gracefully · degraded mode · degrades gracefullyKeeping the core working with reduced features or accuracy when a dependency fails, instead of failing completely.
the two-minute refresher
- Decide in advance what can be dropped: recommendations, exact counts, non-critical features.
- Example: a rate limiter falls back to local in-memory limits when Redis fails.
- Serve stale cached data, default values or simpler paths.
- Make degraded mode visible in metrics so it isn't silently permanent.