LLM Integration
When a language model needs to sit inside an existing application, and the prototype that worked in isolation now has to handle real traffic and real failure.
Integration is where most of the engineering actually lives. A model call is trivial; a model call that handles rate limits, timeouts, partial failures, cost ceilings, and fallbacks is production software.
The design decision that ages best is keeping the choice of model separate from the application logic, so switching providers is a configuration change rather than a rewrite.
What the work includes
- Model calls wrapped with retry, timeout, and fallback behaviour
- Cost controls and budget ceilings enforced server-side
- Provider abstraction so models can be swapped without rewriting callers
- Logging appropriate for debugging without recording sensitive payloads