API Rate Limit Handler
Adds safe retry, backoff and throttling logic for 429 and transient 5xx API errors.
- Repository
- sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills
- Stars
- 49,023
- Licence
- MIT
- Files
- 1 file
What it does
When an agent writes code that calls outside web APIs, this skill tells it how to handle 'slow down' and temporary server errors properly. It teaches the agent to read Retry-After and provider reset headers, wait with capped exponential backoff plus jitter when no hint exists, stop within a total time budget, avoid retrying operations that could cause duplicate side effects, and optionally throttle outgoing requests with a token bucket. It provides TypeScript and Python code patterns for these techniques.
Great for
- Developers integrating with APIs that enforce rate limits, such as GitHub, Stripe or OpenAI
- Teams whose applications fail under load because of 429 or 503 responses
- Developers who want retry logic that avoids duplicating POST requests
Skip it if
- Simple scripts making a few one-off requests, where the added retry machinery is unnecessary
- Non-idempotent operations such as payments or order creation without a provider idempotency key, since retrying them can cause duplicate charges or records
- Code that must follow a specific provider's documented retry policy, since the skill gives general guidance and the agent must still check each provider's docs
Try asking
- “Add retry with exponential backoff to my GitHub API client that respects Retry-After headers”
- “Handle 429 rate limit responses in this Stripe integration without losing requests”
- “Add a client-side token bucket limiting my service to 60 requests per minute”
- “Make my Python httpx calls retry on 503 errors with a maximum total wait of two minutes”
Install in 3 steps
- 1
Download the skill
The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.
api-rate-limit-handler.zip - 2
Add it to your agent
Claude Code (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip api-rate-limit-handler.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip api-rate-limit-handler.zip -d .claude/skills/Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.
- 3
Ask for the task
No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.
Get better results
- State the provider and its documented rate limit headers so the agent parses the correct reset format rather than guessing
- Tell the agent whether the endpoint has side effects and whether the provider offers idempotency keys before enabling retries for POST requests
- Review the generated code before deploying, since retry and throttling logic is easy to get subtly wrong under real load
What's inside
- SKILL.md
Redistributed unmodified from sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.