Graph API X-App-Usage call_count: pause a Reel publisher early

Meta's Graph API returns an X-App-Usage header with call_count, total_cputime and total_time. call_count is the percentage of calls your app made over a rolling one-hour period, and the others are percentages of the allotted CPU and total time for query processing. Read the header after every response and pause the publisher as it climbs.

Meta advises that once the limit is reached you stop making calls, because continuing to call increases the call count and extends recovery time.

What is in the header?

Meta shows the header like this: {"call_count": 28, "total_time": 25, "total_cputime": 25}.

How do I react in code?

Pick your own thresholds; Meta does not publish a safe percentage in the page I read. The sample parses the header and returns how long to wait.

import json


def pause_seconds(header: str, soft: int = 70, hard: int = 90) -> int:
    usage = json.loads(header or "{}")
    worst = max(usage.get("call_count", 0), usage.get("total_cputime", 0), usage.get("total_time", 0))
    if worst >= hard:
        return 600
    if worst >= soft:
        return 60
    return 0


if __name__ == "__main__":
    print(pause_seconds('{"call_count": 28, "total_time": 25, "total_cputime": 25}'))
    print(pause_seconds('{"call_count": 92, "total_time": 25, "total_cputime": 25}'))

Where do Sume jobs fit?

Rendering is a separate budget. Sume's own limits are reported in ratelimit-* headers and generation_limits, so a Meta pause should hold only the publish queue; queued Sume jobs keep their results (Generation admission).