Worked on the spring-ai repository to address a critical issue in the OpenAI API integration, focusing on ensuring the extraBody parameter was consistently included in API requests. Applied Java and API development skills to implement explicit merge logic for request options, introducing a mergeExtraBody utility and leveraging @JsonProperty to maintain data integrity during serialization. Enhanced reliability by adding both wire-level and unit tests, verifying that extraBody propagation worked end-to-end and reducing the risk of silent payload drops. This work clarified request-building semantics, improved maintainability, and ensured that default and runtime configurations merged correctly in production environments.