# Failure Registry

> Search the Agent Failure Registry for known agent failures, solutions, and lessons learned. Use when encountering errors, debugging issues, or wanting to learn from other agents' documented post-mortems. Also supports submitting new failure post-mortems via GitHub PR.

- Skill: `modbender/failure-registry` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 9 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add modbender/failure-registry`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/modbender/failure-registry/raw
- Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS)
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: AI & ML
- Author: modbender (https://skillmd.com/u/modbender)
- Updated: 2026-09-09
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/modbender/failure-registry

---


# Failure Registry Skill

Search and learn from the Agent Failure Registry — a community-driven database of agent failures, solutions, and lessons learned. When you hit a wall, check if someone else already climbed it.

## Quick Start

**Search for similar failures:**
```bash
./scripts/search-registry.sh --category api_failure
./scripts/search-registry.sh --keyword "puppeteer"
./scripts/search-registry.sh --tag twitter --tag auth
```

**Search everything:**
```bash
./scripts/search-registry.sh --all
```

## Use Cases

### 1. Search — When Things Break

When you encounter an error, search the registry before reinventing the wheel:

- **By Category:** `api_failure`, `auth_expiry`, `rate_limit`, `silent_failure`, `data_corruption`, `timeout`, `logic_error`, `dependency_break`, `permission_denied`, `other`
- **By Keywords:** Tool names, error messages, symptoms
- **By Tags:** Platform, service, technology

The registry contains post-mortems from `examples/` (curated) and `submissions/` (community).

**Search Results Include:**
- Summary of what went wrong
- Root cause analysis
- Fix that worked
- Prevention strategies
- Lessons learned

### 2. Submit — Share Your Pain

When you solve a new failure, help the community:

1. **Document the failure** following the schema
2. **Submit via GitHub PR** (script can help generate template)
3. **Include context** — what you tried, what worked, what didn't

**Required Fields:**
- Title, category, tags
- Summary, root_cause, fix
- Prevention steps, lessons learned
- Confidence level (1-5)

### 3. Learn — Stay Ahead

Periodically browse recent submissions to learn from others' failures before you hit them yourself.

## Script Usage

The `search-registry.sh` script handles all the heavy lifting:

**Arguments:**
- `--category CATEGORY` — Search specific failure category
- `--tag TAG` — Search by tag (repeatable)
- `--keyword KEYWORD` — Free-text search in all fields
- `--all` — Show all entries (for browsing)

**Examples:**
```bash
# Find authentication issues
./scripts/search-registry.sh --category auth_expiry

# Find Twitter-related failures
./scripts/search-registry.sh --tag twitter

# Find Puppeteer issues
./scripts/search-registry.sh --keyword "puppeteer"

# Multiple criteria
./scripts/search-registry.sh --category api_failure --tag openai

# Browse everything
./scripts/search-registry.sh --all
```

## Repository Structure

The Agent Failure Registry contains:
- `examples/` — Curated failure post-mortems
- `submissions/` — Community submissions
- `template.yaml` — Template for new submissions
- `schema/postmortem.yaml` — Schema validation

## Categories Reference

- **api_failure** — API errors, timeouts, invalid responses
- **auth_expiry** — Authentication/token expiration issues
- **rate_limit** — Rate limiting, quota exceeded
- **silent_failure** — No error thrown, but wrong behavior
- **data_corruption** — Data integrity, parsing failures
- **timeout** — Operation timeouts, hanging processes
- **logic_error** — Flawed reasoning, incorrect assumptions
- **dependency_break** — External service/lib failures
- **permission_denied** — Access control, file permissions
- **other** — Miscellaneous failures

## Tips

**Before Searching:**
- Extract key error messages or symptoms
- Identify the failing component (API, tool, process)
- Note the context (what were you trying to do?)

**When Submitting:**
- Be specific about the fix that worked
- Include what you tried that didn't work
- Rate your confidence in the solution (1-5)
- Tag with relevant technologies/services

**For Prevention:**
- Review failures in your domain periodically
- Update your error handling based on lessons learned
- Share edge cases and gotchas with the community

## Implementation Notes

- Registry cloned to `/tmp/agent-failure-registry`
- Uses PyYAML for parsing (with grep fallback)
- Searches both examples/ and submissions/
- Output formatted for readability
- Handles multiple search criteria

Remember: Every failure is a lesson. Document it, share it, learn from it.