A retry policy is useful only after the system knows what failed. TL;DR: put interview transcription behind a durable queue, honor Retry-After for 429 responses, and send every other 4xx response to a capability or configuration review instead of retrying it. For an edtech product that scores candidates against a job rubric, preserve the transcript as evidence and validate the score separately. Bulk submission can improve throughput later. It cannot turn an unavailable speech capability into...