Retry Budgets: Max, Delay, Jitter

Concepts covered: paRetryBudget

A retry budget is the explicit set of constraints that govern how a pipeline retries. The beginner tier defined the three numbers: maximum attempts, wait between attempts, and which errors retry. Production pipelines elaborate on those numbers with two more: a maximum cumulative delay across all attempts, and the jitter strategy used to desynchronize retry waves. A complete budget answers the question 'what is the worst case behavior of this retry policy' before the policy ever runs. Without that answer, retry behavior under stress is whatever the runtime decides. The Five Numbers of a Retry Budget Why max_total_elapsed Is Not Redundant A budget with five attempts and a sixty-second cap allows a worst case of about 1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 60 = 75 seconds of retries. That sounds bounded, but the bu

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