---
title: "Turn off optional work under load · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling/degrade-under-load
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Turn off optional work under load

For AI agents: the [site map](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) lists everything here, and this page sits under [Load balancing and autoscaling](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling.md).

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

- ID: SCL-32
- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Load balancing and autoscaling](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling)
- Rule: Mark the features the service can live without, such as recommendations or live counters. Keep a switch that turns them off under overload without a deploy.
- How: Turning whole requests away, as [Turn work away before overload](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/capacity-and-cost/load-shedding) does, is the last step. Before that, do less work per request. The Google SRE book calls this graceful degradation. Put each optional part behind a [feature flag](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/running-in-production/deploy-is-not-release), and let an alert or a person flip it. The degraded path rarely runs, so test it on a schedule and alert when many servers enter it.
- Check: Flip the switch on staging under the planned peak. CPU per request drops by 20% or more, pages still load, and the error rate stays under 1%. The last such test is less than 90 days old.

## Sources

- [Google SRE book, Addressing Cascading Failures](https://sre.google/sre-book/addressing-cascading-failures/)

## Related rules

- [Turn work away before overload](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/capacity-and-cost/load-shedding) in Operations
- [Separate deploying from releasing](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/running-in-production/deploy-is-not-release) in Engineering

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling/degrade-under-load">Agent Wranglers scaling playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Previous: [Give each customer a fair share](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling/per-tenant-limits)
- Next: [Track cost per request](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling/cost-per-request)
- [Load balancing and autoscaling](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/scaling/load-balancing-and-autoscaling)