Pipeline Resumability

Pipeline resumability is the ability to continue processing from the point of interruption instead of restarting the entire pipeline from scratch. This works through persistence (each step saves its output to files like CSV, JSON) so when an API error, token exhaustion, timeout, or session interruption occurs, all previous work is preserved. On startup, the pipeline checks which steps already have saved results and resumes from the first missing one.

Pipeline resumability follows the same pattern as graceful degradation, but in the time dimension: the pipeline stays resilient to interruptions and failures. Resumability is critical for long-running pipelines; a semantic audit of 500 pages can take hours, and a single API error at step 8 of 10 without resumability means repeating from step 1.

For example, a graph building pipeline at step 5 of 6 hits an API timeout, and after fixing the connection, resumes from step 5. In practice, it's worth checking at the start of each step whether the output file already exists — if os.path.exists(output_file): skip, else: process.