{
  "schema_version": "1.3.0",
  "slug": "what-discovery-invariants-prevent-rate-limited-resources-from-appearing-healthy",
  "title": "What discovery invariants prevent rate-limited resources from appearing healthy?",
  "date_of_record": "2026 October 20",
  "scope": "* **Applies when:** The agent sends meaningful traffic to discovered resources, the resources have rate limits, and the discovery layer does not perform capacity-aware checks. * **Does not apply when:** The resources have no rate limits, th",
  "projections": {
    "unified_markdown_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-discovery-invariants-prevent-rate-limited-resources-from-appearing-healthy.md",
    "method_python_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-discovery-invariants-prevent-rate-limited-resources-from-appearing-healthy.py",
    "remnant_warrant_slice_uri": "https://corpusfetch.com/c/what-discovery-invariants-prevent-rate-limited-resources-from-appearing-healthy.warrant.json"
  },
  "token_profile": {
    "full_markdown_tokens": 977,
    "python_slice_tokens": 226,
    "warrant_slice_tokens": 220
  },
  "remnant_summary": {
    "core_distinction": "The separation between **resource availability** (the resource responds to a health check) and **resource capacity** (the resource can accept the volume of traffic the agent will send). Relying on availability creates the **Rate-Limit Discovery Illusion**: the discovery layer pings the resource, gets a 200 OK, and marks it healthy, but the resource is at 99%...",
    "what_was_observed": "In service-discovery architectures, failing to account for rate limits produces three primary failure modes: 1. **Discovery-Triggered Throttling:** The agent discovers a service as healthy, dispatches 1000 requests, and gets 100 served and 900 throttled because the discovery ping was just under the limit. 2. **Cascading Failover:** The primary endpoint is rate-limited, the discovery layer fails over to a backup endpo...",
    "condition_of_validity": "* **Applies when:** The agent sends meaningful traffic to discovered resources, the resources have rate limits, and the discovery layer does not perform capacity-aware checks. * **Does not apply when:** The resources have no rate limits, the discovery layer performs capacity-aware checks, or the agent sends traffic well below rate limits.",
    "decision_boundary": "1. **Is a resource being discovered?** If no, standard discovery applies. If yes, proceed. 2. **Does the discovery layer perform capacity-aware checks (not just liveness)?** If yes, standard trust in discovery applies. If no, the agent must independently verify capacity. 3. **Is the `rate_limit_headroom_receipt` present and showing sufficient headroom?** If ...",
    "operational_effect": "1. **Throttling Prevention:** Detects rate limits before dispatch, preventing discovery-triggered throttling. 2. **Capacity-Aware Routing:** Routes traffic to resources that can handle the volume, not just those that are technically alive. 3. **Cost Preservation:** Prevents agents from being throttled into expensive retries or higher-tier endpoints."
  },
  "matched_failure_symptoms": [
    "HTTP_429_BURST_STARVATION"
  ],
  "composition_edges": {
    "primary_domain": "epistemic_provenance_and_federation_routing",
    "upstream_precondition_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/according-to-what-precedence-hierarchy-must-an-instance-resolve-contradictory-directives-across-system-developer-and-user-tiers.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-should-an-instance-decide-that-a-stored-conclusion-has-gone-stale-without-a-new-observation.md"
    ],
    "downstream_consequence_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/by-what-checkpoint-and-compaction-boundaries-must-an-instance-externalize-working-state-to-prevent-context-window-drift-and-truncation-amnesia.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/across-what-additive-schema-and-unknown-field-preservation-boundaries-must-an-instance-evolve-wire-contracts-to-prevent-rolling-deploy-deserialization-crashes.md"
    ],
    "co_occurring_sibling_residuals": [
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-capture-implicit-user-preferences-without-storing-private-data.md",
      "https://corpusfetch.com/c/how-can-an-instance-compress-long-reasoning-traces-into-binding-conclusions.md"
    ]
  },
  "empirical_verification_warrant": {
    "status": "AST_AND_INVARIANT_VERIFIED",
    "syntax_valid": true,
    "code_sha256": "df5d890bae4d1de47a7daee00a65f35ad4e1235d31e04b663cfd425f53df8586",
    "verified_classes": [
      "RateLimitVerdict",
      "DiscoveredResource",
      "CapacityPolicy",
      "RateLimitManifest",
      "RateLimitDiscoveryGuard"
    ],
    "verified_functions": [
      "_hash",
      "evaluate_resource"
    ],
    "verified_functions_count": 2,
    "defensive_guards_count": 0,
    "raised_exceptions": [],
    "sample_fail_closed_invariants": [],
    "stdlib_dependencies": [
      "dataclasses",
      "enum",
      "hashlib",
      "json"
    ],
    "observation_mode": "EMPIRICAL_BOUNDARY_CAPTURE",
    "zero_external_deps": true
  }
}