API contracts when the backend team is underwater

When backend bandwidth vanishes, contract suites balloon in the wrong direction—more checks, slower feedback, quieter failures. We recommend carving three critical paths only, then scheduling schema diffs to run on deploy tags instead of every commit.

Negotiate a shared vocabulary for "breaking" versus "annoying." Breaking means a consumer will throw; annoying means telemetry drifts. Document both in the same pull request template so reviewers see the classification without a meeting.

Wrap with a lightweight dashboard that shows contract age: last green run, last producer change, last consumer change. Age visibility prevents the silent rot that makes eventual fixes feel personal instead of systemic.