handle-errors

A set of codebase rules for validating inputs and handling failures safely. It covers checking data at system boundaries, using typed errors, and retrying temporary failures.

In plain words
What is it for?
Validating API requests and responses, handling server errors, adding retry and backoff logic, and replacing unsafe catch blocks.
Why use it?
It prevents invalid data, hidden failures, unclear error handling, and immediate failure when a temporary problem could resolve itself.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/jimmypaolini/codebase/handle-errors
Any agent
npx skills add JimmyPaolini/codebase --skill handle-errors
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/JimmyPaolini/codebase

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 36 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 391 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 $0.00036 $0.00391
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00196
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00078
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00039

Measured today against content hash 95c6a5bd0cf8, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

handle-errors 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 today.

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.

.agents/skills/handle-errors/SKILL.md · 76 lines

What it actually says

Error Handling Patterns

This skill consolidates error handling conventions across the codebase.

When to Use This Skill

Use when asked to:

  • Validate inputs or parse API payloads
  • Handle errors in server functions
  • Add retry logic or backoff
  • Fix any usage in catch blocks

Core Rules

  • Validate at boundaries with Zod
  • Use unknown in catch blocks and narrow
  • Avoid swallowed errors
  • Prefer early returns over deep nesting

Zod Validation at Boundaries

import { z } from "zod";

const Schema = z.object({
  id: z.string().uuid(),
  limit: z.number().int().positive().optional(),
});

const data = Schema.parse(input);

Typed Error Handling

try {
  await doWork();
} catch (error: unknown) {
  if (error instanceof Error) {
    console.error(error.message);
  } else {
    console.error("Unknown error", error);
  }
}

Retry with Backoff

const MAX_RETRIES = 3;
const BASE_DELAY_MS = 500;

for (let attempt = 0; attempt <= MAX_RETRIES; attempt++) {
  try {
    return await fetchData();
  } catch (error: unknown) {
    if (attempt === MAX_RETRIES) throw error;
    await new Promise((resolve) =>
      setTimeout(resolve, BASE_DELAY_MS * Math.pow(2, attempt)),
    );
  }
}

References

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. today First seen · 76 lines · 36 tokens per session scan A 95c6a5bd0cf8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

handle-errors is a skill published in the GitHub repository JimmyPaolini/codebase (0 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 36 tokens to every session and 391 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-01.

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