The text discusses the importance of understanding and managing API rate limits, particularly for companies like Merge that rely heavily on integrating multiple third-party APIs. Rate limiting is a mechanism used by APIs to prevent excessive requests, which can lead to account suspension, write blocking, or degraded integration performance. Merge explains that there are several types of rate limits, including request frequency, fetched model count, concurrent sessions, and unsuccessful requests. The company emphasizes the necessity of staying below these limits to avoid potential issues and outlines how they have structured their internal backend to handle these constraints. Additionally, Merge offers a unified API solution that normalizes rate limits and manages integration maintenance, allowing developers to focus on building integrations efficiently without being bogged down by rate limit concerns.