ElevenLabs Production Checklist

Overview

Complete checklist for deploying ElevenLabs TTS/voice integrations to production. Covers API configuration, health checks, circuit breakers, monitoring, and rollback procedures.

Prerequisites

• Staging environment tested and verified
• Production API key (separate from dev/staging)
• Monitoring and alerting infrastructure ready

Instructions

Step 1: Pre-Deployment Verification

Configuration:

• Production API key stored in secure vault (not in code)
• ELEVENLABS_API_KEY set in deployment platform's secrets
• Webhook secret configured (if using webhooks)
• Using production model ID (eleven_multilingual_v2 or eleven_v3)

Code Quality:

• All tests passing with mocked ElevenLabs SDK
• No hardcoded API keys (scan with grep -r "sk_" src/)
• Error handling covers 400, 401, 404, 429, 5xx responses
• Rate limiting implemented matching plan concurrency limit
• Text splitting handles inputs > 5,000 characters
• Audio output format appropriate for use case

Quota Planning:

• Estimated monthly character usage fits within plan limit
• Usage-based billing enabled (Creator+ plans) if needed
• Flash/Turbo models used where latency matters more than quality

Step 2: Health Check Endpoint

// src/api/health.ts
import { ElevenLabsClient } from "@elevenlabs/elevenlabs-js";

interface HealthStatus {
  status: "healthy" | "degraded" | "unhealthy";
  elevenlabs: {
    connected: boolean;
    latencyMs: number;
    quotaRemaining: number | null;
    quotaPctUsed: number | null;
  };
  timestamp: string;
}

export async function healthCheck(): Promise<HealthStatus> {
  const client = new ElevenLabsClient();
  const start = Date.now();

  try {
    const user = await client.user.get();
    const latency = Date.now() - start;
    const { character_count, character_limit } = user.subscription;
    const remaining = character_limit - character_count;
    const pctUsed = Math.round((character_count / character_limit) * 100);

    return {
      status: pctUsed > 90 ? "degraded" : "healthy",
      elevenlabs: {
        connected: true,
        latencyMs: latency,
        quotaRemaining: remaining,
        quotaPctUsed: pctUsed,
      },
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    };
  } catch (error) {
    return {
      status: "unhealthy",
      elevenlabs: {
        connected: false,
        latencyMs: Date.now() - start,
        quotaRemaining: null,
        quotaPctUsed: null,
      },
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    };
  }
}

Step 3: Circuit Breaker

// src/elevenlabs/circuit-breaker.ts
type CircuitState = "closed" | "open" | "half-open";

export class ElevenLabsCircuitBreaker {
  private state: CircuitState = "closed";
  private failures = 0;
  private lastFailure = 0;

  constructor(
    private failureThreshold = 5,       // Open after N consecutive failures
    private resetTimeMs = 30_000,       // Try again after 30s
  ) {}

  async execute<T>(operation: () => Promise<T>, fallback?: () => T): Promise<T> {
    if (this.state === "open") {
      if (Date.now() - this.lastFailure > this.resetTimeMs) {
        this.state = "half-open";
      } else {
        if (fallback) return fallback();
        throw new Error("ElevenLabs circuit breaker is open — service unavailable");
      }
    }

    try {
      const result = await operation();
      this.onSuccess();
      return result;
    } catch (error) {
      this.onFailure();
      if (fallback) return fallback();
      throw error;
    }
  }

  private onSuccess() {
    this.failures = 0;
    this.state = "closed";
  }

  private onFailure() {
    this.failures++;
    this.lastFailure = Date.now();
    if (this.failures >= this.failureThreshold) {
      this.state = "open";
      console.error(`[ElevenLabs] Circuit breaker OPEN after ${this.failures} failures`);
    }
  }

  getState(): CircuitState {
    return this.state;
  }
}

// Usage: graceful degradation when ElevenLabs is down
const breaker = new ElevenLabsCircuitBreaker();

async function generateSpeechWithFallback(text: string, voiceId: string) {
  return breaker.execute(
    () => client.textToSpeech.convert(voiceId, {
      text,
      model_id: "eleven_multilingual_v2",
    }),
    () => {
      // Fallback: return pre-generated placeholder audio or null
      console.warn("[ElevenLabs] Using fallback — TTS unavailable");
      return null;
    }
  );
}

Step 4: Monitoring & Alerting

// src/elevenlabs/monitor.ts
interface TTSMetric {
  operation: string;
  voiceId: string;
  modelId: string;
  textLength: number;
  latencyMs: number;
  success: boolean;
  errorCode?: string;
}

function emitMetric(metric: TTSMetric) {
  // Send to your monitoring system (Datadog, CloudWatch, Prometheus, etc.)
  console.log(JSON.stringify({
    ...metric,
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    service: "elevenlabs",
  }));
}

// Alert thresholds
const ALERT_RULES = {
  p99_latency_ms: 5000,       // Alert if p99 > 5 seconds
  error_rate_pct: 5,           // Alert if error rate > 5%
  quota_used_pct: 80,          // Alert when 80% quota used
  circuit_breaker_open: true,  // Alert on circuit breaker trip
};

Step 5: Pre-Flight Check Script

#!/bin/bash
# pre-flight-check.sh — Run before deploying

echo "=== ElevenLabs Pre-Flight Check ==="

# 1. API connectivity
HTTP=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/user \
  -H "xi-api-key: ${ELEVENLABS_API_KEY}")
echo "API connectivity: HTTP $HTTP"
[ "$HTTP" != "200" ] && echo "FAIL: API not reachable" && exit 1

# 2. Quota check
QUOTA=$(curl -s https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/user \
  -H "xi-api-key: ${ELEVENLABS_API_KEY}" | \
  jq '.subscription | (.character_limit - .character_count)')
echo "Characters remaining: $QUOTA"
[ "$QUOTA" -lt 10000 ] && echo "WARN: Low quota"

# 3. Voice availability
VOICE_COUNT=$(curl -s https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/voices \
  -H "xi-api-key: ${ELEVENLABS_API_KEY}" | jq '.voices | length')
echo "Voices available: $VOICE_COUNT"

# 4. TTS smoke test
TTS_STATUS=$(curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -X POST "https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM" \
  -H "xi-api-key: ${ELEVENLABS_API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text":"Pre-flight check.","model_id":"eleven_flash_v2_5"}')
echo "TTS smoke test: HTTP $TTS_STATUS"
[ "$TTS_STATUS" != "200" ] && echo "FAIL: TTS not working" && exit 1

echo "=== All checks passed ==="

Deployment Monitoring

Alert	Condition	Severity
API unreachable	Health check fails 3x	P1 — Critical
Quota exhausted	401 quota_exceeded	P1 — Critical
High error rate	5xx > 5% of requests	P2 — High
Rate limited	429 > 10/min sustained	P2 — High
High latency	p99 > 5000ms	P3 — Medium
Quota warning	> 80% used	P3 — Medium

Error Handling

Scenario	Response
ElevenLabs API down	Circuit breaker opens; fallback to cached/placeholder audio
Quota exhausted mid-day	Alert team; switch to Flash model (0.5x cost); queue non-urgent requests
Voice deleted	Return 404 to caller; alert; fall back to default voice
Webhook delivery failing	Monitor ElevenLabs webhook health; webhooks auto-disable after 10 failures

Resources

• ElevenLabs Status
• ElevenLabs API Reference
• Usage Dashboard

Next Steps

For version upgrades, see elevenlabs-upgrade-migration. For cost optimization, see elevenlabs-cost-tuning.