Error Handling Patterns

---
triggers:
  - "error handling patterns"
name: error-handling-patterns
description: Master error handling patterns across languages including exceptions, Result types, error propagation, and graceful degradation to build resilient applications. Use when implementing error handling, designing APIs, or improving application reliability.
---

# Error Handling Patterns

Build resilient applications with robust error handling strategies that gracefully handle failures and provide excellent debugging experiences.

## When to Use This Skill

- Implementing error handling in new features
- Designing error-resilient APIs
- Debugging production issues
- Improving application reliability
- Creating better error messages for users and developers
- Implementing retry and circuit breaker patterns
- Handling async/concurrent errors
- Building fault-tolerant distributed systems

## Core Concepts

### 1. Error Handling Philosophies

**Exceptions vs Result Types:**
- **Exceptions**: Traditional try-catch, disrupts control flow
- **Result Types**: Explicit success/failure, functional approach
- **Error Codes**: C-style, requires discipline
- **Option/Maybe Types**: For nullable values

**When to Use Each:**
- Exceptions: Unexpected errors, exceptional conditions
- Result Types: Expected errors, validation failures
- Panics/Crashes: Unrecoverable errors, programming bugs

### 2. Error Categories

**Recoverable Errors:**
- Network timeouts
- Missing files
- Invalid user input
- API rate limits

**Unrecoverable Errors:**

## Note
Skill content truncated for token efficiency. Full version available in the source repository.