{
  "schema": "vedokrok.public-item.v1",
  "release_id": "MHC-RPUB-20260920-75ad787a",
  "url": "/knowledge/find-the-breaking-point-before-production-finds-it-for-you",
  "id": "MHC-D-RESEARCH-0531",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "title": "Find the breaking point before production finds it for you",
  "summary": "Capacity is a fact you discover by pressure, not a number you inherit from last year's diagram.",
  "kind": "protocol",
  "body": "Increase representative load in a controlled environment until latency, errors or useful throughput begin to degrade. Record the bottleneck and the failure shape, not only the maximum completed rate. Test both gradual and sudden load where bursts are plausible.",
  "limits": [
    "Do not load-test shared production systems without explicit safety controls and authorization."
  ],
  "topics": [
    "union-capacity-overload-resilience"
  ],
  "intents": [],
  "source_ids": [
    "RS-C1BEE49CF0075A87"
  ],
  "evidence": [
    {
      "claim": "Google SRE recommends load testing capacity limits and overload failure modes because overload can reduce useful throughput rather than merely slow work.",
      "source_id": "RS-C1BEE49CF0075A87",
      "role": "supports",
      "note": "Load-test conditions must resemble the workload enough to expose the real bottleneck.",
      "locator": "Preventing server overload and testing for cascading failures"
    }
  ],
  "use_when": [
    "A service, agent workflow or batch process has never been tested beyond its normal load."
  ],
  "avoid_when": [
    "Do not load-test shared production systems without explicit safety controls and authorization."
  ],
  "example": "Run an agent queue past normal parallelism to see whether tool rate limits, memory, retries or human review become the real constraint.",
  "check": "The team knows where useful throughput stops scaling and what fails first.",
  "steps": [
    "The workload resembles real request or job shapes.",
    "Load increases beyond normal operating level.",
    "Useful throughput, latency and errors are observed together.",
    "The first bottleneck and overload failure mode are recorded.",
    "Recovery after overload is tested, not only the climb."
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "RS-C1BEE49CF0075A87",
      "title": "Addressing Cascading Failures",
      "url": "https://sre.google/sre-book/addressing-cascading-failures/"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "from": "MHC-D-RESEARCH-0531",
      "to": "MHC-D-RESEARCH-0532",
      "type": "use_before",
      "url": "/knowledge/keep-headroom-for-variability-and-recovery"
    },
    {
      "from": "MHC-D-RESEARCH-0531",
      "to": "MHC-D-RESEARCH-0541",
      "type": "useful_with",
      "url": "/knowledge/let-reliability-data-slow-feature-velocity-when-the-budget-is-spent"
    }
  ],
  "collections": [
    {
      "id": "RC-2845565BFEBD1A30",
      "title": "Keep useful work flowing when demand exceeds capacity",
      "url": "/collections/keep-useful-work-flowing-when-demand-exceeds-capacity"
    }
  ]
}