Decoder. plain-English AI glossary

Rollback

● Core

Instantly revert to a previous version if something goes wrong—switch traffic back to the old model or code.

Think of it like

Hitting undo after a bad edit.

Example

New model v1.2 causes 5x error rate spike; revert to v1.1 while team debugs the issue.

How it actually works

Speed of rollback directly affects blast radius. Requires pre-tested fallback version running in parallel (blue-green or canary). Automated triggers (error rate threshold, latency spike) initiate rollback without human intervention. Test rollbacks regularly to ensure they work under stress.

For product teams

Insurance policy that lets teams ship fast and recover quickly if things break.

For engineers

Traffic selector or DNS points back to stable version; circuit breaker or health check validates old version is healthy; telemetry confirms rollback succeeded.

Related

Read anything AI without the jargon

Look up any term in plain English, or save terms as you read with the free Chrome extension.

Open DecoderAdd to Chrome