Designing a 3-Tier LLM Fallback Router with Cooldown Locking
A developer built a three-tier fallback router to manage rate limits on LLM API calls, preventing user drop-offs. The system prioritizes a primary model and automatically switches to backup or last-resort models when the preferred option is rate-limited. This architecture ensures service continuity by degrading performance rather than causing complete outages, and includes a cooldown mechanism to avoid repeatedly querying exhausted models. AI
IMPACT Provides a practical architectural pattern for developers to manage LLM API rate limits and ensure service availability.