Hermes Wiki

ThirdPartyAPIs

Patterns for calling external APIs safely: timeouts, retries, circuit breakers, API key rotation.

Why we need this / what value this brings

An unbounded call to a flaky third party can hang a request indefinitely and cascade into your own outage.

When to use this

Every third-party call, without exception — this isn't optional hardening, it's baseline.

How to use or implement this

Set an explicit timeout, retry transient failures with backoff, and decide up front what the user sees if the third party is down.

Research questions

  • Which Localz integrations (payments, maps/geocoding, SMS/email) need a circuit breaker vs just a timeout?

Empty folder — drop notes, links, and findings here as you research.

Hermes Wiki