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Circuit Breaker

Interrupt or restrict a coupled flow when overload signals indicate cascade risk, then re-open cautiously under feedback.

The Diagnostic Story

Symptom: One overloaded component is dragging everything coupled to it down with it. Load keeps pouring into the part that is already failing, latency and errors climb, and the damage spreads outward faster than anyone can intervene by hand. Throughput is no longer the problem; survival is.

Pivot: Put a controllable seam between the failing component and its callers, and let an observed overload signal open it, cutting or shedding inbound flow instead of forwarding it into the fire.

Resolution: The cascade stops at the seam; the protected component gets room to stabilize, then flow is re-admitted cautiously under feedback rather than restored all at once. You have traded some throughput and fairness for continued viability of the whole.

Reach for this when you hear…

[on-call SRE] “The database is melting and every retry is making it worse: stop sending it traffic before the whole site goes down.”

[markets] “Prices are in free fall and the order flow is feeding the panic; halt trading before it cascades.”

[power grid] “That line is overloaded: trip the relay and shed it before it takes the substation with it.”

Abstractions this archetype builds on — directly (a source ingredient) or as a related pattern. Links follow the typed catalog namespace.

Built directly on (3)

Variants

Narrower or domain-specific specializations that share this archetype's core structure. Recognized variants are established; candidate variants are provisional.

Half-Open Recovery · risk or failure variant · likely subtype

A cautious recovery state in which limited flow is reintroduced after a breaker has opened.