Troubleshooting LLM Uptime and Error Handling

Understanding Uptime and Reliability

Fikra API does not publish a specific uptime SLA or guarantee dedicated capacity. Reliability depends on the underlying infrastructure and the specific model alias requested. To ensure robustness in your application, implement client-side retry logic and error handling for transient failures.

Common HTTP Error Codes

Handling 429 and 503 with Exponential Backoff

For 429 (rate limit) and 503 (service unavailable) errors, use exponential backoff to avoid overwhelming the API. Below is a compact Python example using the requests library.

import time
import requests

FIKRA_API_KEY = "your_api_key_here" # Load from environment variable in production
BASE_URL = "https://api.fikraapi.co.ke/v1"


def call_fikra_with_retry(model="fikra-flash", max_retries=5):
    url = f"{BASE_URL}/chat/completions"
    headers = {
        "Authorization": f"Bearer {FIKRA_API_KEY}",
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
    }
    payload = {
        "model": model,
        "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]
    }

    for attempt in range(max_retries):
        try:
            response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=payload)

            if response.status_code in [429, 503]:
                # Exponential backoff: 1s, 2s, 4s, 8s, 16s
                wait_time = 2 ** attempt
                print(f"Received {response.status_code}. Retrying in {wait_time}s...")
                time.sleep(wait_time)
                continue

            response.raise_for_status()
            return response.json()

        except requests.exceptions.RequestException as e:
            if attempt == max_retries - 1:
                raise e
            time.sleep(2 ** attempt)

    raise Exception("Max retries exceeded")

# Example usage
# result = call_fikra_with_retry()

Best Practices

1. Monitor Wallet Balance: A 402 error indicates insufficient credits. Monitor your balance in the Fikra dashboard to prevent service interruptions.
2. Respect Rate Limits: Adhere to the 30 RPM (unverified) or 100 RPM (trusted) limits to avoid 429 errors.
3. Validate Model Aliases: Use only current Fikra aliases (fikra-flash, fikra-fast-8b, fikra-pro-20b, fikra-pro-120b). Unsupported models will return a 400 error.
4. No Automatic Failover: Fikra does not automatically fail over to other models or providers. Your application must handle retries and error states explicitly.