error-handling

Guidelines for handling errors in AWS Lambda, Amazon’s service for running code without managing servers. They cover error categories, structured results, API responses, and message-queue retries.

In plain words
What is it for?
Classifying Lambda errors, returning consistent API Gateway responses, handling failed SQS messages, and using middleware or result objects for expected errors.
Why use it?
They help prevent temporary failures from being treated like permanent input errors, which can cause unnecessary retries or unclear API responses.

Cursor rule for Cursor

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 rules/goranerhartic/cursor-development-rules/error-handling
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/GoranErhartic/cursor-development-rules

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 27 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 567 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 $0.00027 $0.00567
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00283
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00113
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00057

Measured 2d ago against content hash 052a09b38496, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

error-handling 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 2d ago.

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.

.cursor/rules/languages/aws-lambda/error-handling.mdc · 42 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 42 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Lambda Error Handling

Concepts (Result pattern, RFC 7807): see ../../patterns/error-handling.mdc. Below: Lambda-specific classification and responses.

Error Classification

  • Transient: Network timeout, 5xx — retry (SQS: do not add to batchItemFailures only if you want retry; by default failed items are retried)
  • Validation/Not Found/Business: 4xx — do not retry; return 400/404/409; set isRetryable: false in AppError when using Result for SQS
  • Infrastructure: DB/connection failure — retry
  • Unknown: Log, consider as retryable unless proven otherwise

Result Pattern (minimal implementation)

  • AppError: code, message, statusCode?, isRetryable?, details?
  • Result<T, E>: { success: true; data: T } | { success: false; error: E }; helpers: Result.ok(data), Result.fail(error), Result.isOk(r), Result.isFail(r)
  • Use for domain/validation; throw for programming errors; in SQS handler push failed messageId to batchItemFailures and do not throw for business/validation (treat as non-retryable)

API Gateway Response

  • Success: statusCode 2xx, body JSON string
  • Error: Use RFC 7807 ProblemDetails (type, title, status, detail, instance, etc.); set statusCode from error; CORS headers on error response
  • Middy: Use httpErrorHandler (or equivalent) to map thrown errors to response; ensure 4xx/5xx and body format consistent

SQS / Batch

  • Do not throw to fail entire batch; catch per message, push itemIdentifier: record.messageId to batchItemFailures, return { batchItemFailures }
  • For non-retryable (e.g. validation): still add to batchItemFailures so Lambda does not retry; optionally send to DLQ via visibility timeout + redrive policy

Conventions

  • Classify errors; use Result for expected failures; map to correct HTTP status and body; log with correlationId; include isRetryable for batch

Anti-Patterns

  • Throwing in SQS handler to fail batch; returning 200 on error; no correlationId in logs; generic 500 for validation errors

Read the full file on GitHub · 42 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 42 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 052a09b38496

Subscribe to this mod's changes

error-handling is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository GoranErhartic/cursor-development-rules (19 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 567 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.