Design a safer API handoff

What you will learn

• Send a stable request identifier.
• Define retry and error behavior.
• Keep an audit trail of the handoff.

The lesson

A good handoff has a clear contract: the fields sent, the response expected and the owner of failures. If an API call times out, the sending system must know whether repeating it creates a duplicate order. A stable request ID lets the receiving system recognise the same action.

Log enough context to answer three questions later: what was requested, whether it succeeded and what a person should do if it failed. Put failed items in a review queue rather than silently dropping them or retrying forever.

Try this

For one system-to-system action, write the request ID, required fields, success response and what happens after two failed attempts.