What I Learned from Malformed JSON in a Node.js Feature Flag API

A scheduled media import creates an awkward constraint: malformed JSON sent to a Node.js feature flag API may look like a contained client error, while the operational symptom arrives later as an empty edition, a stale feed, or no new assets. My choice is to preserve enough evidence to reconstruct the decision that governed each import, not merely retry the invalid payload. Short answer: treat a 400 or 422 as a permanent request failure until the body proves otherwise. Capture the exact response body, correlate it with a W3C trace ID, validate the outbound payload before transmission, and reco