Decision 014
When asynchronous processing should replace synchronous APIs
Context
API consumers need timely acknowledgement, but downstream work varies in duration and failure modes.
Decision
Use synchronous APIs for fast, deterministic request/response paths. Move long-running or bursty work behind asynchronous processing with explicit status interfaces.
Trade-offs
Async improves resilience and scalability, but adds operational complexity, eventual consistency and richer observability needs.
When I would reconsider
Reconsider if the workload becomes consistently short-lived, or if clients truly require strong immediate consistency end-to-end.