/install error-handling
Error Handling
Consistent errors reduce support load and on-call pain. Design a taxonomy, stable codes, safe user messaging, and operator visibility—without leaking secrets or stack traces to clients.
When to Offer This Workflow
Trigger conditions:
- Inconsistent HTTP status codes and response bodies
- Retry storms or duplicate side effects from naive retries
- Logs that cannot be tied to user-visible failures
Initial offer:
Use six stages: (1) classify errors, (2) map to transport, (3) user messaging, (4) retries & idempotency, (5) observability, (6) client SDKs & DX). Confirm REST/GraphQL/gRPC and sync/async patterns.
Stage 1: Classify Errors
Goal: Distinguish validation, authentication, authorization, not found, conflict, rate limit, dependency failure, and internal bugs.
Exit condition: Table or enum of codes with owning team and meaning.
Stage 2: Map to Transport
Goal: Correct HTTP 4xx/5xx; GraphQL errors with extensions; gRPC status codes; optional RFC 7807 Problem Details for JSON APIs.
Stage 3: User Messaging
Goal: Actionable copy for end users; opaque support reference id; no internal hostnames, SQL fragments, or stack traces in client responses.
Stage 4: Retries & Idempotency
Goal: Retry only safe or idempotent operations; exponential backoff with jitter; align with idempotency keys on writes.
Stage 5: Observability
Goal: Structured logs with error.code, trace_id, user_id (where allowed); metrics by error class; alerts on error-rate SLO burn.
Stage 6: Client SDKs & DX
Goal: Typed errors in SDKs; documented recovery; map codes to user-facing strings in apps consistently.
Final Review Checklist
- Taxonomy and ownership defined
- Transport mapping correct and consistent
- User-safe messages with correlation ids
- Retry policy matches idempotency story
- Logs and metrics wired for ops
Tips for Effective Guidance
- Separate expected validation errors from unexpected 500s in dashboards.
- Pair with idempotency for write paths and queues.
Handling Deviations
- Mobile offline: queue with explicit user-visible sync state.
- Make sure OpenClaw is installed (local or Docker)
- Run the install command in chat:
/install error-handling - After installation, invoke the skill by name or use
/error-handling - Provide required inputs per the skill's parameter spec and get structured output
What is Error Handling?
Deep error handling workflow—taxonomy, user-visible vs internal errors, retries and idempotency, observability, and supportability. Use when standardizing fa... It is an AI Agent Skill for Claude Code / OpenClaw, with 257 downloads so far.
How do I install Error Handling?
Run "/install error-handling" in the OpenClaw or Claude Code chat to install it in one step — no extra setup required.
Is Error Handling free?
Yes, Error Handling is completely free, licensed under MIT-0. You can download, install and use it at no cost.
Which platforms does Error Handling support?
Error Handling is cross-platform and runs anywhere OpenClaw / Claude Code is available (cross-platform).
Who created Error Handling?
It is built and maintained by mike47512 (@mike47512); the current version is v1.0.0.