Catch and revert AI failures in production (automatically)

You ship a new AI Config; maybe a prompt tweak, a model update, or a change to system behavior. Then something breaks in production and you’re left scrambling to find and resolve the issue. Does this sound familiar?

With Guarded Rollouts for AI Configs, LaunchDarkly helps you catch those failures automatically and roll them back instantly. By monitoring key metrics like success rate, latency, or user feedback, you can build an automated safety net for your runtime AI behavior.

AI breaks differently, and it breaks fast

Imagine that you're building an AI-powered assistant for your product team, and the prompt works well. However,your team wants to switch models from GPT-4 to Claude Sonnet for cost reasons. The swap looks clean in staging, but when it hits production:

• Latency goes up by 500ms
• Output tone shifts subtly but consistently off-brand
• Your support team flags user frustration by the end of the day

This is the reality of shipping GenAI in production. Even tiny changes can create ripple effects that you don’t detect until they’re already impacting users.

Unlike traditional software, GenAI is non-deterministic and environment-sensitive. You can't simply test it in staging and trust that it’ll behave the same way in production. And when things go wrong, the feedback loop can be slow, manual, and reactive.

How teams try to manage risk today

Most teams rely on a patchwork of solutions:

• Hardcoded A/B tests
• Monitoring dashboards + Slack alerts
• Manual rollbacks when user complaints pile up
• “Just keep an eye on it” as the fallback QA plan

These methods work are fragile. They’re slow to catch regressions, and they create stress for anyone responsible for AI quality in prod. If you're scaling AI experiences across teams or products, this kind of duct-taped risk management becomes a liability.

Introducing Guarded Rollouts for AI Configs

Teams need a control plane for GenAI apps in production. That’s why we built Guarded Rollouts: to give teams production-grade safety without the production-grade stress.

Guarded Rollouts for AI Configs give you runtime control, automated safeguards, and real-time feedback, so you can test confidently and roll back the moment something goes wrong, without having to obsessively stare at your metrics and logs.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Update your AI Config (change a prompt, tweak model parameters, or swap providers)
2. Use LaunchDarkly to gradually roll out the change (e.g., 5%, 10%, 50%)
3. Define guardrails based on metrics from the AI SDK (like success rate, latency, or structured user feedback)
4. If any metric crosses your threshold (e.g., success rate drops below 90%), the rollout halts or reverts automatically

Built-In metrics without extra instrumentation

When you use an AI SDK, LaunchDarkly automatically tracks:

• Completion success rate: Measure how often the model output meets expectations
• Latency: Detect performance regressions
• Token usage: Monitor cost-impacting changes
• Feedback: Track structured user interactions and quality ratings 

No extra dashboards or manual thresholds; just safer shipping by default.

Real-world example: model migration without the stress

Your team wants to try GPT-4o instead of GPT-4 for a new summarization use case. You roll it out behind a feature flag with a guardrail:

“Only continue if the success rate stays above 92% and latency stays under 2 seconds.”

After rolling out to 25% of users, LaunchDarkly detects a spike in latency during peak hours. Rollout halts automatically. Your team reverts to GPT-4 and starts investigating. Users never see the degradation. Your team stays calm.

How to get started

1. Install your LaunchDarkly AI SDK of choice.
2. Enable autogenerated metrics—these are created automatically from SDK events.
3. Define your AI Config—prompts, models, and parameters.
4. Create a rollout rule with guardrails—e.g., “Only continue if success rate > 90%.”
5. Get some peace of mind while LaunchDarkly handles the rest—LaunchDarkly will monitor, pause, or revert based on your defined metric thresholds.

AI Changes don’t have to be high-risk

Guarded Rollouts for AI Configs bring production-grade safety and observability to your GenAI workflows. You can move fast and ship responsibly—without babysitting dashboards or crossing your fingers in prod. Want to get to work now? Start your free trial. If you have questions, contact us at aiproduct@launchdarkly.com.