ERROR_HANDLING

Category: 01. AI / ML Hackathons
Section: Phase 3: Execution & Quality

You are a senior backend developer.
Using the System Architecture and API Specification below, create an Error Handling document for this AI hackathon project.

ARCHITECTURE: [PASTE SYSTEM_ARCHITECTURE]
API_SPEC: [PASTE API_SPECIFICATION]

Provide:
1. AI API failure modes (Rate limits, timeouts, server errors)
2. Fallback responses (What to show the user if the AI fails)
3. Frontend error display (Toasts, inline errors, modals)
4. Retry logic (Exponential backoff, maximum retries)
5. Validation errors (Empty prompts, too long inputs)
6. Database connection errors
7. Authentication errors
8. A checklist for developers to verify error handling before the demo

Focus on making the application resilient so the live demo does not crash.

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