When the Token Well Runs Dry: A Degradation State Machine for LLM Services
The alert fires at 3:14 AM. Your LLM service returns 500s. The free quota is gone. You check the dashboard. 10,000,000 tokens. Zero remaining. Most guides teach prevention. Budgets. Ledgers. Pre-checks. This one teaches survival. What happens after the quota dies? The answer determines if your user