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SECTION 1: OVERVIEW & CORE PRINCIPLES
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The platform provides a high-throughput event-driven microservices architecture.
Every incoming request must carry a valid Bearer token in the Authorization header.

### Message Exchange Protocol:
1. Client sends POST request to /v1/events.
2. Gateway verifies HMAC signature.
3. Worker thread dispatches event to Kafka queue.

User: How do I handle 429 Too Many Requests?
Assistant: When receiving a 429 status, inspect the 'Retry-After' header and use exponential backoff with jitter.

User: Can you show me an example?
Assistant: Yes, here is an example in JavaScript using setTimeout.