Circuit Breaker Pattern

Category: infrastructure

A design pattern used to detect failures and prevent an application from repeatedly trying to execute an operation that is likely to fail.

When a service (like a database or external API) goes down, the circuit "trips." Instead of trying to connect 1,000 times a second and clogging the network, the breaker "opens" and immediately returns an error. It allows the system to recover gracefully without a total collapse.

Common Examples

• Our API client implements the circuit breaker pattern to instantly stop requesting data from the down underwriting service, preventing system-wide latency.
• The circuit breaker pattern saved our infrastructure from a total cascade failure during the unexpected outage of the third-party credit check service.