Circuit Breaker - CI/CD Glossary Definition

Circuit Breaker: A circuit breaker stops calling a failing dependency after errors cross a threshold, returning fast failures for a cool-down period before cautiously testing whether it has recovered.

A circuit breaker stops calling a failing dependency after errors cross a threshold, returning fast failures for a cool-down period before cautiously testing whether it has recovered.

A circuit breaker prevents a struggling dependency from dragging down its callers. When it "opens", requests fail immediately instead of piling up on a service that cannot answer.

In CI

If a flaky external service starts timing out, a circuit breaker lets dependent steps fail fast and be retried later rather than every job hanging until its timeout expires.

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