For founders · tier list
What breaks in production
Ranked by frequency in the field, not by how dramatic they sound. The top row is what actually happens. The bottom row is what people worry about.
What is on it
- The ownership check nobody wrote
- Costs with no ceiling
- An error message that shows the stack trace
- Prompt injection through an uploaded file
- The provider rate limiting you at the worst moment
- Context window quietly truncating the important part
- A model update changing the output format
- Retries hiding a failure until the bill arrives
- Nobody logging the prompt, so nothing is debuggable
- The vector index going stale without anyone noticing
- A timeout that leaves the user staring at a spinner
- Two users' sessions crossing in a shared cache
- The fallback path that was never tested
- Regional latency nobody measured
- The model refusing a legitimate request
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