nous-hermeshub Tool Use Guardian
Overview
The reliability wrapper every AI agent needs. Monitors tool calls, auto-retries failures, fixes truncated responses, and learns which tools are unreliable — so you never lose your chain of thought.
Free forever. Built by the Genesis Agent Marketplace.
Install
npx skills add christopherlhammer11-ai/tool-use-guardian
When to Use This Skill
- Use when tool calls return truncated or malformed JSON
- Use when APIs timeout or rate-limit your agent mid-task
- Use when a multi-step chain breaks partway through
- Use when you need automatic retry logic without writing it yourself
- Use for any agent workflow that depends on external tool reliability
How It Works
Step 1: Pre-Call Validation
Before every tool call, Guardian validates:
- Required parameters are present and correctly typed
- The tool is not marked as "unreliable" from previous failures
- Request size is within known limits
Step 2: Failure Classification
When a tool call fails, Guardian classifies the failure into one of 9 categories:
| Failure Type | Recovery Action |
|---|---|
| Truncated JSON | Re-fetch with pagination or smaller chunks |
| API Timeout | Retry once with simpler request, then decompose |
| Rate Limit (429) | Exponential backoff, max 3 retries |
| Auth Expired | Flag for user intervention |
| Mid-chain Break | Resume from last successful checkpoint |
| Error-as-200 | Detect {"error": "..."} disguised as success |
| Schema Mismatch | Attempt auto-coercion, warn if lossy |
| Network Failure | Retry with jitter, max 2 attempts |
| Unknown Error | Log full context, escalate to user |
Step 3: Chain Protection
For multi-step tool chains, Guardian maintains checkpoints. If step 4 of 7 fails, it resumes from step 4 — never restarts from scratch.
Step 4: Learning
Guardian tracks failure patterns per tool. After 3+ failures of the same type, it marks the tool as unreliable and suggests alternatives.
Best Practices
- ✅ Let Guardian wrap all external tool calls automatically
- ✅ Review Guardian's reliability reports to identify flaky tools
- ✅ Use checkpoint recovery for long chains
- ❌ Don't disable retry logic for rate-limited APIs
- ❌ Don't ignore repeated failure warnings
Related Skills
@recallmax- Long-context memory enhancement (also free from Genesis Marketplace)
Links
- Repo: https://github.com/christopherlhammer11-ai/tool-use-guardian
- Marketplace: https://genesis-node-api.vercel.app
- Browse skills: https://genesis-marketplace.vercel.app
Limitations
- Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above.
- Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
- Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.