# Graceful degradation

Concept · [Technical basics](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/technical)

Also called: degrade gracefully, fallback, fallbacks, fail gracefully

Designing a system so that when one part fails, the rest keeps working in a simpler way instead of breaking completely.

**For example:** When the AI [summary](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/secondary-source) service is down, the app still shows the full article and hides the summary box.

## Connects to (3)

- [Uptime](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/uptime): The share of time a service is working and reachable.
- [Observability](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/observability): Being able to see what a running system is doing through its logs, metrics and traces, so a team can tell when something goes wrong and why.
- [Production](https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/production): The live version of your app that real customers use.

Map view: https://ecosystem.samcarlton.com/graceful-degradation