Fallback Logic Design Review (Delivery)

Fallback Logic Design Review (Delivery)

1. 01

   Map every handoff point in the agent chain and label each one as blocking or non-blocking

   A blocking handoff stops the whole workflow when it fails; a non-blocking handoff can degrade to a cached result or a human queue. Most agency chains have two or three blocking points that nobody documented before the retainer was signed.

2. 02

   Define the retry budget per agent before writing any fallback code

   Two retries with exponential backoff covers transient API errors; a third retry on a deterministic failure just burns tokens. Write the number down and put it in the client-facing runbook so scope conversations stay grounded.

3. 03

   Assign a named human owner to each blocking handoff, not a team alias

   Orchestration platforms such as StackAI and AgentX expose alerting hooks, but an alert with no individual owner becomes a shared inbox nobody checks on a Friday afternoon.

4. 04

   Build a degraded-mode output for each agent that can fail independently

   If the compliance-check agent in a content pipeline goes down, the workflow should still emit a draft flagged for manual review rather than returning nothing. Typeface-style brand-grounding steps are a common place to insert this fallback because the output is still usable without the final gate.

5. 05

   Test the failure path deliberately by disabling one agent at a time in staging

   Run the chain with the extraction agent offline, then the generation agent, then the review agent. Record what the client sees at each point. A chain that has never been broken in testing will break in production during a launch week.

6. 06

   Log every fallback trigger with a timestamp, agent ID, and downstream effect

   This log becomes the evidence base for the reliability claims your agency makes in renewal conversations. Without it, a 40 to 60 percent timeline reduction claim is an assertion, not a measured result.

7. 07

   Set a monthly review cadence to retire fallbacks that never fire and harden the ones that do

   Fallback logic rots as models and integrations change. A quarterly pass on a self-hosted setup like Pacific Slate is enough; a client-facing chain on a managed platform warrants monthly attention.