Glossary · AI-native development
Backpressure
A flow-control mechanism that slows or rejects upstream work when a downstream component cannot process it safely at the current rate.
Why it matters
Without backpressure, queued agent runs, tool calls, or streamed events can exhaust memory, exceed rate limits, and amplify retries.
In practice
When the evaluator queue reaches its limit, pause new agent jobs or return a retryable response instead of accepting unbounded work.
Common confusion
Backpressure protects capacity before failure. A circuit breaker stops calls after failures show a dependency is unhealthy.
Related terms
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