Rethinking Document Pipeline Architecture: When Backpressure Points to Design Flaws

Document pipeline backpressure—manifested through queue congestion, mixed case handling, and retry accumulation—is fundamentally an architectural problem, not merely an operational one. The piece argues that explicit queue separation with distinct paths for clean and ambiguous cases, evidence attachment, and failure classification prevents workflow chaos before it impacts system reliability. This architectural mindset directly affects team efficiency and user experience in real-world document processing.