Strong decisions come from a small amount of relevant evidence, a clear understanding of risk and an explicit stopping point.
Separate facts from interpretations. Start with service behaviour, constraints, logs and reproducible observations before proposing an architectural change.
A practical review asks what is actually failing, which contract matters and what the smallest useful experiment can reveal.
A small confirmed defect needs a small repair. A change to recovery, authentication or user data deserves deeper validation. Treat additional mechanisms as ongoing obligations, not as evidence of quality.
Name the concrete failure or decision.
List the constraints worth preserving.
Choose the least complicated valid option.
Observe both successful requests and expected failures. A useful test demonstrates the contract: a correct response, an understandable error, or the preservation of important state.
If repeated experiments do not resolve uncertainty, stop expanding the test matrix and state the next single observation that would matter.