When a Website Should Call an AI API

Call an API only if the answer cannot be prebuilt

If the content is known at build time, generate the HTML then. A model call on every page view adds latency, cost, and a new outage mode.

Good request-time uses are personal to the input: classifying an inquiry, drafting a reply for staff, or answering from a closed set of documents the visitor selected.

Put a ceiling on it

Every live integration needs a timeout, a maximum input size, and a monthly cost expectation. Open-ended chat on a public page fails all three.

We would rather refuse a huge prompt than let a form become an unbounded bill.

Failure is a design state

The page must say what happened and offer the non-AI path: a normal form, a phone number, a static FAQ.

If the feature is useless without the model, it is probably the wrong feature for this site.