Rate Limits and Retries

Calling a flaky or throttled API without melting it or yourself: 429s, exponential backoff with jitter, idempotency, and circuit breakers.

1. Why APIs Push Back Rate limits aren't an insult — they're how a shared service stays up for everyone. Token buckets, the 429 status, and the Retry-After header that tells you exactly how long to wait.
2. Retrying Without Making It Worse Exponential backoff, why jitter is non-negotiable, a retry budget so you give up gracefully, and the golden rule of only retrying requests that are safe to repeat.
3. When Retrying Isn't Enough The thundering-herd problem, the circuit breaker that stops you hammering a downed service, and what it really means to be a good client.