How I built a 3-provider LLM fallback system in production (and what actually broke)

A pre-final year student created Socra, a SaaS platform that employs five AI personas to evaluate startup ideas and generate detailed architecture plans. Initially, the system worked with three LLM providers for fallbacks, but a subtle issue went unnoticed until real users encountered problems. This account delves into the development, deployment, and unexpected breakdowns that highlighted the importance of rigorous testing and robustness in production environments, especially for student-led startups.