failure-recovery

Failure Recovery Skill

Protocol for handling consecutive failures to prevent thrashing and wasted effort.

When to Activate

• Same operation fails 3 times consecutively
• Different approaches to the same problem all fail
• Test suite keeps failing after multiple fix attempts
• Build errors persist after several corrections
• Search queries return no useful results repeatedly

Three-Failure Protocol

After 3 consecutive failures on the same objective:

STOP → REVERT → DOCUMENT → CONSULT

1. STOP

Immediately halt the current approach. Do not:

• Try "one more variation"
• Make additional speculative changes
• Continue down the failing path

2. REVERT

Restore to last known good state:

# If changes were made to files
git checkout -- <affected-files>

# If in middle of complex operation
git stash

# If commits were made
git reset --soft HEAD~N  # where N = number of bad commits

3. DOCUMENT

Create a failure record:

## Failure Record: [Brief Description]

**Objective**: What was being attempted

**Attempts**:
1. [First approach] → [Why it failed]
2. [Second approach] → [Why it failed]
3. [Third approach] → [Why it failed]

**Observations**:
- [Pattern noticed across failures]
- [Unexpected behavior]
- [Missing information]

**Hypotheses**:
- [What might actually be wrong]
- [What assumptions might be incorrect]

4. CONSULT

Ask the user for guidance:

I've attempted this 3 times without success:

**Goal**: [What I was trying to do]

**Approaches tried**:
1. [Approach 1]: [Result]
2. [Approach 2]: [Result]
3. [Approach 3]: [Result]

**What I think might be happening**:
[Hypothesis]

**Options**:
1. [Alternative approach A]
2. [Alternative approach B]
3. [Ask for more context about X]

Which would you like me to try, or do you have other suggestions?

Failure Categories

Build/Compile Failures

• Check for missing dependencies
• Verify environment setup
• Look for version mismatches
• Check import paths