Honest readiness: why 'coming soon' builds more trust than 'fake active'

I once joined a team whose dashboard showed every model as 'active' — green dots everywhere. It looked great until a customer tried Gemini and got a cryptic 500. The API key had expired two weeks earlier, but the readiness check was hardcoded to return true. The customer lost two days debugging. That experience shaped how I think about readiness.

Four states, no more

• Configured: Dependency connected, tested, responding within acceptable latency. Green means real.
• Unconfigured: Setup required. Feature exists in code but has no production credentials. Show a setup guide, not an error.
• Degraded: Responding but with elevated latency or error rate. Works but should be used carefully. Show warning with current metrics.
• Coming soon: Not implemented. No production API promised. Show estimated timeline if available, never a fake active state.

// Cached readiness checks with timeouts
const store = new Map<string, ReadinessStatus>();

async function checkReadiness(provider: string) {
  const cache = store.get(provider);
  if (cache && Date.now() - cache.checkedAt < 30_000) return cache;
  try {
    const start = performance.now();
    const res = await fetch(healthUrl(provider), { signal: AbortSignal.timeout(5000) });
    const status = { state: res.ok ? "configured" : "degraded",
      latencyMs: Math.round(performance.now() - start), checkedAt: Date.now() };
    store.set(provider, status);
    return status;
  } catch {
    return { state: "unconfigured", checkedAt: Date.now(), error: "Health check failed" };
  }
}

Updated: May 19, 2026