Question 1

What is a capability-first gateway?

Accepted Answer

An agent asks for a job rather than naming a vendor. Thruact routes the request to a provider that can serve it, fails over to another when one returns 429, 5xx or a timeout, and returns the same fields whichever provider answered.

Question 2

What happens when a provider fails?

Accepted Answer

The next provider is tried and the caller sees one result. Thruact never fails over on a bad request, because retrying a malformed call across four providers bills four times for one mistake.

Question 3

Do all providers of a capability return the same shape?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is enforced when the catalogue is built rather than promised in documentation. A capability declares the fields a caller may rely on, and a provider that cannot produce them fails validation.

Question 4

How is reliability measured?

Accepted Answer

From observed traffic. Success rate and median latency are computed over a rolling seven-day window and the router ranks on them. A provider with too little traffic to judge is reported as unmeasured rather than given an optimistic default.

Question 5

Is a failed call charged?

Accepted Answer

No. Money is reserved before the call and captured after it, so a call that fails captures nothing.

Name the job, not the vendor

What it does that a vendor SDK cannot