What is cli-error-handling?

A pattern for handling command-line interface errors with structured error objects, result values, and explicit exit codes. Structured errors carry details such as the cause, suggested fix, and documentation link.

Use it when implementing CLI commands, separating command logic from error formatting, producing human or JSON output, and handling expected versus unexpected failures.

It gives users actionable error messages and predictable success or failure codes without making normal command failures look like unexpected crashes.

cli-error-handling — Cursor rule for Cursor by prisma/orm

About the project

Prisma ORM is a Node.js and TypeScript database toolkit that lets applications work with databases through a programming interface instead of writing every query directly in SQL. Developers use it with databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, SQLite, MongoDB, and CockroachDB. The catalogue add-ons provide agent rules, skills, hooks, agents, and other workflows for using Prisma.

prisma/orm · 47,693 stars · on GitHub · prisma.io

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.

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/prisma/orm

Made for: Cursor.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/prisma/orm/cli-error-handling.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 0 Nothing until a file matches its globs; then the whole rule loads.

When invoked 957 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00000	$0.00957
Opus 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00383
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00000	$0.00191
Haiku 4.5	$0.00000	$0.00096

Measured 14d ago against content hash 6ea132e376fc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cli-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 14d 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

cli-error-handling — 100% identical, 157 lines differ

.agents/rules/cli-error-handling.mdc · 70 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 70 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CLI Error Handling

Paths below are relative to packages/1-framework/3-tooling/cli.

A command settles a result; it does not exit

An ORM command is a defineOrmCommand({ help, args, needs, exitCodes, handler }) (src/orm/define-command.ts), which wraps @prisma/cli-engine's defineCommand.
The handler returns ok(...) or notOk(error) from @prisma/cli-engine/protocol. It does not end the process: src/bin.ts sets process.exitCode = await runOrmCli(process), and the engine picks the code from the settled result.
A notOk error settles at exit 2. A finding on a completed run, such as drift, is a success whose ctx.present({ data, exitCode }) names a code the command declares in exitCodes (src/orm/db/verify.ts, INIT_EXIT_CODES in src/orm/init.ts).

Errors are structured, with dotted codes

Codes are NAMESPACE.SUBCODE: CONFIG.FILE_NOT_FOUND, CONTRACT.DEFAULT_INVALID, CLI.UNEXPECTED. See ADR 239.
Build a CLI error with a factory from src/utils/cli-errors.ts, which re-exports those of @internal/errors/control (errorConfigFileNotFound, errorFileNotFound, errorUnexpected, …). A command-specific factory lives with the command, such as src/commands/init/errors.ts.
ActionableCliError (src/utils/cli-errors.ts) carries typed nextActions as well as fix prose; only the CLI knows the invocation that fixes a failure.
normalizeError (src/orm/normalize-error.ts) is the one conversion to the engine's protocol shape. It turns fix prose into user-choice next actions. Pass every error a handler returns through it.

Catching an error

A handler's try reports what it caught with errorFromCaught(error, why, { connection }) (src/control-api/operations/caught-errors.ts):

a CLI error is reported as it is;
any other error with a structured code a library raised is reported as itself, whatever its namespace, such as RUNTIME.TYPE_PARAMS_INVALID;
an InternalError is thrown again;
anything else is CLI.UNEXPECTED, with why(message) and any non-structured code it carries, such as ECONNREFUSED, in meta.code.

Read the full file on GitHub · 70 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.

14d ago Changed · -81 lines 6ea132e376fc
1mo ago First seen · 151 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A dfc787123c02

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cli-error-handling is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository prisma/orm (47,693 stars, last pushed today), licensed Apache-2.0. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 957 tokens. 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.

Databases TypeScript javascript nodejs orm prisma

cli-error-handling

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade A, and why

Nothing flagged

Copies of this mod

How it starts

CLI Error Handling

A command settles a result; it does not exit

Errors are structured, with dotted codes

Catching an error

What this file has done since we first saw it

Other cursor rules, from other repositories

prisma

typescript-style

drizzle-patterns

react-typescript

windsurfrules

code-validation-workflow