{
  "schemaVersion": "crawler-atlas-1",
  "atlasVersion": "atlas-2026-07-28-v1",
  "canonical": "/atlas/http-status",
  "title": "HTTP status semantics",
  "category": {
    "slug": "http",
    "title": "HTTP behavior and efficiency"
  },
  "definition": "HTTP status codes tell a crawler whether a request succeeded, moved, failed temporarily, or failed permanently.",
  "mechanism": "A 200 offers a representation, 3xx redirects, 404 and 410 indicate absence, 429 asks for slower traffic, and 5xx signals a server-side failure.",
  "validation": "Store every hop with status, timestamp, latency, and retry context rather than collapsing a chain into the final body.",
  "commonFailure": "Returning a friendly error page with status 200 creates a soft 404 and makes failure look like valid content.",
  "related": [
    "/atlas/redirects",
    "/atlas/retry-after"
  ],
  "modified": "2026-07-28"
}