Deepgram Production Checklist

Contents

• Overview

• Prerequisites

• Instructions

• Output

• Error Handling

• Examples

• Resources

Overview

Comprehensive checklist for deploying Deepgram integrations to production with singleton client, health checks, Prometheus metrics, alert rules, and go-live procedures.

Prerequisites

• Completed development and staging testing

• Access to production secrets management

• Monitoring infrastructure configured

• On-call rotation established

Instructions

Step 1: Verify API Configuration

Create production API key with minimal scopes. Store in secrets manager (not env vars in code). Set 90-day expiration. Prepare fallback key. Understand rate limits for your tier.

Step 2: Implement Error Handling

Catch all API errors with structured logging. Add retry logic with exponential backoff. Implement circuit breaker pattern. Define fallback behavior for API failures.

Step 3: Configure Performance

Set up singleton client with connection pooling. Configure 30s request timeout. Limit concurrent requests. Optimize audio preprocessing. Enable response caching where applicable.

Step 4: Set Up Health Check Endpoint

Create /health endpoint that tests Deepgram API connectivity and reports latency. Return 200 for healthy, 503 for unhealthy.

Step 5: Configure Production Metrics

Define Prometheus counters for transcription total (by status), histograms for duration, counters for audio seconds processed and rate limit hits.

Step 6: Deploy Alert Rules

Alert on error rate >5% (5min, critical), P95 latency >10s (warning), rate limit hits >10/hr (warning), and health check failure >2min (critical).

See detailed implementation for advanced patterns.

Output

• Verified production API configuration

• Production-safe singleton client

• Health check endpoint

• Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboard

• AlertManager rules for key thresholds

Error Handling

Issue Cause Solution

API key expired No rotation Set expiration alerts, auto-rotate

High error rate Deepgram issue Check status page, enable fallback

Rate limiting Too many requests Implement backoff, increase tier

Health check fail Network/API issue Verify connectivity, check status

Examples

Pre-Deployment Checklist

Category Key Items

API Config Prod key, secrets manager, key rotation, rate limits

Error Handling Retries, circuit breaker, fallback, error logging

Performance Connection pooling, timeouts, caching, preprocessing

Security HTTPS, input validation, PII redaction, audit logs

Monitoring Health check, metrics, alerts, dashboards

Go-Live Timeline

Phase Actions

D-7 Load test, security review, documentation

D-0 Smoke test, dashboards open, on-call confirmed

D+1 No critical alerts, error rate within SLA

Resources

• Deepgram Production Guide

• Deepgram SLA

• Support Portal