explain-error

A command that explains Stripe payment error codes or messages in plain English and suggests code for handling them.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when debugging Stripe payments or adding user-friendly, language-specific error handling.
Why use it?
It helps you understand what went wrong, identify likely causes, and decide whether the error should be retried.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/stripe/ai/explain-error
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/stripe/ai
Per session 10 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 158 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00010 $0.00158
Opus 5 $0.00005 $0.00079
Sonnet 5 $0.00002 $0.00032
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00016

Measured yesterday against content hash 4d1e56c4de18, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

explain-error scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

providers/claude/plugin/commands/explain-error.md · 21 lines

What it actually says

Explain Stripe Error

Provide a comprehensive explanation of the given Stripe error code or error message:

  1. Accept the error code or full error message from the arguments
  2. Explain in plain English what the error means
  3. List common causes of this error
  4. Provide specific solutions and handling recommendations
  5. Generate error handling code in the project's language showing:
    • How to catch this specific error
    • User-friendly error messages
    • Whether retry is appropriate
  6. Mention related error codes the developer should be aware of
  7. Include a link to the relevant Stripe documentation

Focus on actionable solutions and production-ready error handling patterns.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 21 lines · 10 tokens per session scan A 4d1e56c4de18

Subscribe to this mod's changes

explain-error is a command published in the GitHub repository stripe/ai (1,783 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 10 tokens to every session and 158 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.