Briefle words · Code & architecture
Jitter
A small random amount added to each retry delay so many clients don't all retry at exactly the same moment.
Say it to an AI
Python send_sms(to, body, key) that retries up to 5 times with exponential backoff and jitter (1s, 2s, 4s…), honoring Retry-After on 429 (capped at 30s), but only for transient errors: HTTP 429, 5xx, timeouts and connection errors. Send the same idempotency key on every attempt so a retry can't double-send. Re-raise any other 4xx error immediately.
How an expert would brief the stronger version of “SMS retry loop”.
See it
Try it as a puzzle →Pull request adding retries to the function that sends appointment reminder texts through an SMS provider's API.
Why: B adds random.random() (up to one second) to every delay; A's fixed 'time.sleep(1)' has none, so every reminder that failed together retries together, second after second.
Related words
Room 4 · Errors & edge cases
Learn “Jitter” in a five-minute lesson