Reference · Glossary
Graceful degradation
Serving **reduced but useful** responses when dependencies fail — instead of total outage.
#When to use
Vector DB down → keyword search fallback; model timeout → cached summary.
#When not to
Silently lowering safety — degraded modes still need guardrails and disclosure when appropriate.
#Example
Readiness fails for reranker; API answers from top-3 chunks without rerank and adds “limited retrieval” banner.