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What Happens When Nobody Wants the Answer?
A client disconnects while their request is being processed. What should happen to the work in flight?
The scenario
A search endpoint fans out to six backends. Clients time out at 2 seconds. Backend load stays at 100% for minutes after a traffic spike ends, and the vendor bill for one paid backend is triple the request count the API gateway recorded.
What it tests
- Whether the candidate treats cancellation as a design concern rather than an afterthought
- Whether they know cancellation is cooperative and must propagate
- Whether they think about partially completed side effects
Answer it out loud first. Recognising a good answer is not the same skill as producing one.