When Personalisation Costs 15 Seconds: Redesigning an LLM Feature for Reliability

The separation between core functionality and optional generation is the strongest part of this redesign. At IT Path Solutions, we’ve found that removing an LLM from the critical path is only half the reliability problem; the fallback still needs a clear product contract. If curated and generated content differ in difficulty, ambiguity, or expected behavior, the system can remain technically available while becoming inconsistent for users. Defining what the fallback must guarantee makes the architecture much stronger: the background model can improve the experience when it succeeds, but it should never change the guarantees of the core interaction. That turns AI into a true enrichment layer rather than a hidden dependency.