# Resiliency Circuit Breakers

> Trigger: circuit breaker, exponential backoff, jitter delay, connection timeout, API retry. Scope: Client request resiliency, API retries, fault isolation. Boundary: Excludes visual state loading skeletons.

- Skill: `coreyone/resiliency-circuit-breakers` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add coreyone/resiliency-circuit-breakers`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/coreyone/resiliency-circuit-breakers/raw
- Safety review: PASS (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Integrations & APIs
- Author: coreyone (https://skillmd.com/u/coreyone)
- Updated: 2026-08-19
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/coreyone/resiliency-circuit-breakers

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# 🛡️ Core Philosophy: Assume everything will fail, and design systems that degrade gracefully.

## When to use

Use this skill when implementing network requests (fetching data, posting mutations), designing backend integrations, writing microservices communication, creating resilience decorators, or defining request timeout and queue limits.

## When not to use

Do not use this skill for styling layout states, analytics event naming schemas, or setting up auth sessions.

## Trigger cues

- Key terms: circuit breaker, exponential backoff, jitter, timeout, fallback state, bulkhead, resilience, retry policy, microservice fault, network retry.
- Designing fetch decorators, handling API timeouts, writing retry functions, or isolating service calls.

## Routing boundary

- Primary for network fault management, retry systems, circuit-breaker patterns, timeout policies, and API client wrappers.
- Secondary to `system-architecture-rules` for high-level structure.

## Inputs required

- Target programming language and network library (e.g., Axios, fetch in TS, URLSession in Swift)
- Specific latency requirements and timeout limits
- Source of truth: `references/source.md`

## Instructions

1. **Detect Stack**: Inspect the workspace files to identify the project's existing programming language and network libraries (e.g., TypeScript/Fetch/Axios, Swift/URLSession, Python/requests).
2. **Do Not Migrate**: Never propose or force a technology stack change. Apply the principles in this skill using the project's current tooling.
3. Read [references/source.md](references/source.md) to understand timeouts, retries, jitters, and circuit breakers.
4. Set explicit request timeouts on all network clients to prevent resources from locking up.
5. Bound retries by attempts or elapsed time. Retry only operations that are safe or protected by idempotency, using exponential backoff with random jitter.
6. Design circuit-breaker wrappers (Closed, Open, Half-Open states) around downstream services.
7. Outline clear fallback behaviors (serving stale cache, cached user configurations, or empty lists).

## Completion gate

Before reporting completion, verify the applicable binary contracts in `evals/cases.json`: explicit timeout, bounded safe retries with backoff and jitter, all three circuit states with a recovery probe, and a visible bounded fallback.

## Output format

- Primary decision/output: Resiliency logic wrapping network requests, retry helper implementations, and circuit-breaker config.
- Summary: One-paragraph overview of request resiliency and fault strategy.
- Actions: Verification checklist for timeout limits, jitter distribution, and circuit-breaker threshold safety.