Implement proactive throttle management for Shopify Admin GraphQL API calls by reading extensions.cost and throttleStatus on every response

In-depth guide

Steps

1. After every successful GraphQL response, read `extensions.cost.requestedQueryCost`, `extensions.cost.actualQueryCost`, and `extensions.cost.throttleStatus` — these fields are present on all Admin GraphQL responses regardless of HTTP status code
2. From `throttleStatus`, read `maximumAvailable` (total bucket capacity), `currentlyAvailable` (remaining points), and `restoreRate` (points restored per second) to understand your current rate limit state
3. Before dispatching each request, check `currentlyAvailable` against the estimated cost of the next query; if `currentlyAvailable` is below a safe threshold (e.g., 200 points), calculate the wait time as `(threshold - currentlyAvailable) / restoreRate` seconds and delay the next request
4. When a request is throttled, Shopify returns HTTP 200 with a `THROTTLED` error code in `errors[0].extensions.code` — check for this code (not HTTP 429) and back off exponentially before retrying
5. Use the `actualQueryCost` from the response (which may be less than `requestedQueryCost` for queries that return fewer results than the estimated maximum) to refund the difference to your local token bucket model
6. For high-throughput apps, implement a request queue with a leaky-bucket algorithm client-side, using `restoreRate` and `currentlyAvailable` from the last response to gate request dispatch