Health Checks: Is Your Service Alive or Just Running?

A health check API answers 'Can you do your job right now?', not just 'Is your process running?'. It's a service's self-report on its ability to handle requests by checking dependencies like databases. Load balancers and service registries poll this endpoint to route traffic away from unhealthy instances, while monitoring systems use it to trigger alerts. The main footgun is creating a check that isn't comprehensive, allowing a service to report 'healthy' right before failing due to an untested dependency.