Engineering Reliable LLM API Calls: From Retries to Caching

As LLM-powered tools scale to hundreds of API calls per run, transient failures become inevitable. This article demonstrates a proven, layered reliability architecture: exponential backoff retries handle temporary failures and rate limits, semaphores prevent overwhelming APIs through concurrency control, and content-addressed caching eliminates redundant calls. Together, these patterns transform unpredictable LLM APIs into dependable infrastructure.