Automation Reliability Over Feature Richness

When building automation products, there is a temptation to add "bells and whistles." "Look! It can summarize PDFs! It can generate images! It can tell jokes!"

But for business users, there is only one feature that matters: Trust.

The 99% Failure Rate

If an automation works 99 times and fails once, the user stops trusting it. They feel the need to "check its work." If they have to check its work, the automation has failed. It didn't save time; it added anxiety.

Boredom is the Goal

We prioritize reliability over richness. We would rather ship a bot that does one thing perfectly 100% of the time, than a bot that does ten things 90% of the time.

Handling edge cases

Reliability isn't about the "Happy Path." It's about the mud.

• What if the API times out?
• What if the input data is malformed?
• What if the third-party service is down?

A feature-rich bot crashes. A reliable bot catches the error, retries 3 times with exponential backoff, and if it still fails, logs a clean ticket for a human and alerts the team.

The "Silent" Feature

Reliability is a silent feature. Nobody tweets "Wow, the app worked exactly as expected today!" But they definitely tweet when it breaks.

Reliability is the foundation of retention. Features get them in the door. Reliability keeps them from churning.