Safe degradation (failure hierarchy)

How the system behaves when dependencies fail.

Manufacturing degrades. IntelFactor degrades safely.

Failure scenario	System behavior	Operator indication
Internet down	Local inspection continues; events buffer locally	“Offline mode: inspection active”
Site server down	Edge nodes continue; cross-line analytics unavailable	“Site analytics unavailable”
Camera disconnected	Station pauses; others unaffected; watchdog retries	“Camera offline: manual inspection required”
Edge node crash	Watchdog restarts services; state recovered from local DB	“Restarting → recovered”
Disk full	Oldest optional buffers deleted first; metadata never stops	“Storage critical”
Explanation model fails	RCA degrades to statistical-only output	“RCA basic mode”

This table is the acceptance baseline. If any failure stops metadata logging, it’s a deployment blocker.