Fallback Endpoint Doctrine

A gateway makes model swaps a config change, which is the cheapest lever an agency has for cutting per-token inference costs and vendor lock-in without rewriting client integrations. The same design also concentrates risk: one base URL becomes a single point of failure for every retainer workflow pointed at it. The Fallback Endpoint Doctrine says a gateway is only production-ready once a second OpenAI-compatible endpoint exists behind the same SDK call, so a host outage or model retirement is a routing decision rather than an incident. Concretely, an agency running deterministic batch jobs through TokenDelivery.ai for byte-identical outputs can keep a fixed-pass host like endlesstokens as the overflow path when a deadline window matters more than reproducibility. Forrester's 2027 predictions push clients toward P&L accountability, and a delivery stall caused by one host is the fastest way to lose that argument.