Your publish article tool calls an external CMS API that occasionally returns transient errors (network…

Question

Your publish article tool calls an external CMS API that occasionally returns transient errors (network timeouts, 503s) and non-transient errors (403 permission denied, 422 validation failure). Currently, every error is returned directly to the agent, which leads to the agent retrying non-transient errors and wasting turns on failures that will never succeed. How should you partition error-handling responsibility between the tool implementation and the agent?

Accepted Answer

B. Handle transient errors (timeouts, 503s) with automatic retries inside the tool implementation, and surface non-transient errors (permission denied, validation failures) to the agent with descriptive messages so it can take corrective action.

Answer

A. Handle all errors inside the tool: Implement retries with exponential backoff for every error type, and only surface a failure to the agent after a fixed number of retry attempts have been exhausted.

Answer

C. Surface all errors to the agent immediately with detailed context, and let the agent decide which errors to retry and how many times-keeping the tool implementation stateless and simple.

Answer

D. Implement a universal error handler that catches all exceptions and returns a generic "tool unavailable-try again later" message, shielding the agent from error complexity.

Question 212