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tool-design-errors

Design actionable agent tool errors, ambiguity handling, retry guidance, and fallback behavior, or debug an agent that loops on or misreads a failing tool.

plugins/runtypelabs/skills/skills/tool-design-errors/SKILL.md

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# Tool error design

An agent that receives only `429` either retries in a tight loop or gives up. An agent
that receives "Rate limited. Wait 30 seconds, or reduce `batchSize` to 50 and retry"
makes a better second call. Give every error a class, a reason, and the next call to
make. Design the failure paths with the same care as the success path.

## Procedure

1. **List every way the tool can fail**: bad input, missing prerequisite, not found,
   ambiguous match, upstream unavailable, rate limit, timeout, permission denied,
   missing scope, partial completion.
2. **Classify each failure** into exactly one class (below). The class tells the agent
   whether to retry, change the call, ask the user, or have the user re-authenticate.