Error Recovery Patterns

Error Recovery Patterns Skill

This skill provides comprehensive guidance on error handling patterns, recovery strategies, and debugging techniques in GitHub Agentic Workflows (gh-aw).

Purpose

Guide developers in implementing robust error recovery patterns to:

• Reduce retry loops in agent sessions (target: <10% vs current 23%)
• Implement circuit breakers to prevent infinite retry loops
• Add proactive recovery for installation, dependency, and API failures
• Improve debug logging for recovery attempts

When to Use This Skill

Invoke this skill when:

• Implementing retry logic for network operations, installations, or API calls
• Debugging retry loop issues in workflows or agent sessions
• Adding error recovery patterns to new or existing code
• Understanding transient vs non-transient error classification
• Implementing circuit breakers or exponential backoff
• Adding debug logging for recovery attempts

Key Concepts Covered

1. Circuit Breaker Pattern

• Maximum retry limits (standard: 3 attempts)
• Exponential backoff strategies
• Fail-fast on non-transient errors
• Implementation in JavaScript, Shell, and Go

2. Installation Failure Recovery

• NPM installation with cache clearing and registry fallbacks
• Python pip installation with mirror alternatives
• Docker image pull with retry and rate limit handling
• Copilot CLI installation with network retry

3. API Timeout and Rate Limit Handling

• GitHub API rate limit detection and backoff
• Transient error detection patterns
• Custom retry configuration for different APIs
• Rate limit-specific retry strategies

4. Debug Logging for Recovery

• Logger package usage for retry attempts
• Category naming conventions (pkg:filename)
• DEBUG environment variable patterns
• Zero-overhead logging when disabled

5. Error Categorization

• Transient vs non-transient errors
• Network errors, timeout patterns
• HTTP error codes (502, 503, 504)
• GitHub-specific errors (rate limits, abuse detection)

Anti-Patterns to Avoid

This skill explicitly covers anti-patterns to avoid:

• ❌ Infinite retry loops without maximum limits
• ❌ Retrying validation errors that won't self-correct
• ❌ No backoff delay between attempts
• ❌ Silent retries without logging
• ❌ Retrying non-transient errors

Code Examples Provided

The skill includes production-ready examples for:

• JavaScript retry with withRetry() function
• Shell script retry loops with exponential backoff
• Go retry patterns with context and timeouts
• NPM/pip/docker installation recovery
• GitHub API rate limit handling
• Debug logging for all recovery attempts

Related Skills

• error-messages - Error message formatting and style guide
• error-pattern-safety - Safety guidelines for error pattern regex
• developer - General development guidelines and conventions

Full Documentation

Complete documentation available at: ../../scratchpad/error-recovery-patterns.md

This skill references the comprehensive error recovery patterns document which includes:

• Console formatting requirements
• Error wrapping patterns
• Common error scenarios with step-by-step resolution
• Error message templates
• Debugging runbook
• Error categorization decision trees
• Metrics and monitoring strategies