Handling API Rate Limits in Marketplace Alerts with Bounded Retry Logic

The article argues that HTTP 429 responses from upstream APIs should be treated as capacity signals rather than generic delivery failures in notification systems. It recommends recording response details, honoring Retry-After headers when valid, and using exponential backoff with a capped number of retries. Using a marketplace scenario with order, payment, and delivery updates, the author notes that unbounded persistence can create synchronized pressure and worsen the rate limit. The proposed policy starts with three retries, a maximum delay, optional bounded jitter, and a final failure record when the cap is reached. The author also includes a Go code example that constructs an error-capture request with an idempotency key.