error-ux

error-ux is a skill for Claude Code from jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace. It costs 0 tokens per session (1,877 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for writing error messages that explain what happened, why it happened, and how to recover. It focuses on wording errors in terms users can understand instead of technical codes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when auditing or writing validation, exception, connection, permission, timeout, and other recovery-focused error messages.
Why use it?
It helps users fix problems instead of being left with vague messages such as error numbers or system jargon.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the error-therapist plugin — 1 skill, 1 agent shipped together

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 skills/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace/error-ux
Any agent
npx skills add jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace --skill error-ux
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install error-therapist, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 1 skill, 1 agent.

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.

agentmods badge for error-ux

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace/error-ux.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace/error-ux)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace/error-ux"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace/error-ux.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 0 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,877 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 5.1 $0.00000 $0.01877
Opus 5 $0.00000 $0.00938
Sonnet 5 $0.00000 $0.00375
Haiku 4.5 $0.00000 $0.00188

Measured 6d ago against content hash 979e470db1d3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

error-ux 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 6d 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.

plugins/error-therapist/skills/error-ux/SKILL.md · 271 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 271 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Error UX Skill

Purpose

Provides principles and patterns for writing error messages that help users recover instead of leaving them stuck.

The Error Message Framework

Every error message should answer three questions:

1. What Happened (Symptom)

State the problem in user terms, not system terms.

System Speak User Speak
ETIMEDOUT The request took too long
ECONNREFUSED Cannot connect to the service
403 Forbidden You don't have permission
ENOMEM The system is overloaded
Deadlock detected Please try again in a moment
ENOENT File or resource not found
EPERM Permission denied
EEXIST Already exists

2. Why It Happened (Cause)

Give the most likely explanation without requiring technical knowledge.

Common causes to surface:

  • Network connectivity issues
  • Invalid input (be specific about which field)
  • Missing permissions
  • Resource not found (was it deleted?)
  • Rate limiting
  • Service temporarily unavailable
  • Session expired
  • Configuration missing

3. What To Do (Resolution)

Provide concrete next steps. Prioritize:

  1. Self-service fixes ("Check your internet connection")
  2. Retry suggestions ("Try again in a few minutes")
  3. Alternative paths ("Use X instead")
  4. Support escalation (last resort, with context to provide)

Error Categories and Patterns

Input Validation Errors

Always specify:

  • Which field failed
  • What was wrong with it
  • What format is expected
Bad:  "Validation error"
Good: "Phone number must be 10 digits. You entered: 555-123 (7 digits)"

Bad:  "Invalid input"
Good: "Email address is invalid: 'not-an-email' is missing the @ symbol"

Bad:  "Field required"
Good: "Please enter your last name"

Authentication/Authorization Errors

Be vague enough for security, helpful enough for legitimate users:

Bad:  "Invalid password for user [email protected]"  // Confirms email exists
Good: "Email or password is incorrect. [Forgot password?]"

Bad:  "You don't have admin role"  // Leaks role information
Good: "You don't have permission to access this page. Contact your administrator if you need access."

Bad:  "Token expired at 2024-01-15T10:30:00"  // Leaks timing info
Good: "Your session has expired. Please log in again."

Read the full file on GitHub · 271 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. 6d ago First seen · 271 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 979e470db1d3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

error-ux is a skill published in the GitHub repository jimmc414/claude-code-plugin-marketplace (4 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 1,877 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 2026-08-31.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

batch-simplify

Batch-run simplification across changed files, or across an entire repository, grouped by ecosystem and dependency order. Use when: 'batch simplify', 'simplify recent changes', 'forgot to run simplify', 'catch up on simplify', sweeping a named scope such as a branch, a whole repository, or one directory, or after a…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 153 tokens

extract-ssot

Deduplicate repeated markdown content, rule files, skill bodies, ADRs, docs, into a single named source of truth and migrate every call site to cite it by exact heading. Use when the same prose, literal, or concept appears (or is reworded) across files: 'DRY this prose', 'extract a shared rule', 'single source of…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 130 tokens

audit-encapsulation

Audit and remediate skill-encapsulation violations. External citations reaching into private surfaces inside .claude/skills/ / or plugins/ /skills/ / (marketplace monorepos) beyond the slash invocation. Use when: 'audit encapsulation', 'find skill leaks', 'skill boundary violation', 'who is reaching into ', 'check…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 92 tokens

audit-progressive-disclosure

Read-only progressive-disclosure audit for agent-facing instruction markdown. Grades every target against a three-tier load-cost model (always-loaded / invocation-loaded / on-demand) and classifies seven finding shapes in two lanes: split opportunities (oversize vs tier-calibrated Anthropic-prescribed caps…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 259 tokens

quiz-me

Post-work comprehension check: after a change is complete, generate a self-contained HTML report of what was done (context, intuition, decisions) with a quiz at the bottom that you answer. Verifying the HUMAN absorbed the work, not the artifact. Non-gating by default; the quizpolicy userConfig tunes offer cadence.…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 177 tokens

firecrawl

Scrape, search, crawl, map, parse, or interact with web pages via the firecrawl-cli binary, writing results to disk instead of streaming them into context. Actions: scrape, search, crawl, map, parse, interact, agent, monitor, search-feedback, credit-usage. Use when: 'scrape this page', 'crawl this site', 'search the…

melodic-software/claude-code-plugins · 155 tokens