Graceful degradation sounds simple: if one dependency is unavailable, keep the independent parts of the application running.
That is the right goal. The trap is treating degraded mode as one boolean that turns a feature off. In a routed web application, each endpoint sits inside a graph of framework services, middleware, policies, and downstream systems. Removing one dependency does not remove the others.
A recent committed change made that distinction unusually clear.
One extra path segment changed the result
The host had two broad capabilities:
