Error Handling Patterns
Guides the agent to design exceptions, Result types, retries and graceful fallbacks in code
- Repository
- wshobson/agents
- Stars
- 42,095
- Licence
- MIT
- Files
- 2 files
What it does
When installed, this skill gives the agent a set of guidelines for handling failures in software: when to use exceptions versus explicit success/failure result types, how to separate recoverable errors (like network timeouts or rate limits) from unrecoverable ones (like out-of-memory or programming bugs), and common pitfalls such as empty catch blocks, catching overly broad exceptions, and duplicate logging. It also points the agent to a reference document with deeper pattern examples, so it can write or review error handling code with these practices in mind.
Great for
- Developers writing new features who want consistent, resilient error handling
- Engineers reviewing code for swallowed errors, broad catch blocks or poor error messages
- Teams designing APIs that need clear failure behaviour, retries or circuit breakers
Skip it if
- Non-programmers or people who only need a one-off fix: the guidance is conceptual and assumes coding knowledge
- Projects where the agent's generic suggestions would override established team conventions or framework-specific error handling without review
Try asking
- “Review this service module and point out where errors are being swallowed or caught too broadly”
- “Add retry with backoff and graceful fallback to this API client call”
- “Design an error type hierarchy for our order-processing code”
- “Improve the error messages in this validation layer so users know how to fix their input”
Install in 3 steps
- 1
Download the skill
The ZIP contains the 2 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.
error-handling-patterns.zip - 2
Add it to your agent
Claude Code (all projects)
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip error-handling-patterns.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)
mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip error-handling-patterns.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
- Name the language and framework you use, since the examples are Python-style and the agent should match your idioms
- Ask for the agent's changes to be reviewed against your existing logging and monitoring setup, as the skill's advice on logging is general
- Treat the generated retry and circuit-breaker code as a starting point and test failure paths before relying on it in production
What's inside
- references/details.md
- SKILL.md
Redistributed unmodified from wshobson/agents 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.