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ADR 0010: Error system conventions

  • Status: accepted
  • Date: 2026-07-03

Context

The error system is centralized in src/kernel/errors.ts (AppError, normalizeError, defaultHintForCode, retriableForErrorCode) but has ~1,200 construction sites across the CLI, daemon, and platform layers. A July 2026 audit (code sweep + iOS/Android dogfooding) found the kernel sound while call-site quality drifted: internal validation thrown as bare Error (surfacing as UNKNOWN with a misleading hint), semantically wrong codes (COMMAND_FAILED for busy devices, INVALID_ARGS for expired server-side resources), missing hints on the most common agent failures (selector/ref misses), and consumers that drop fields (MCP tool errors carried only message). Nothing documented the conventions, so each new site re-decided them.

Decision

  1. Every thrown error a user or agent can reach is an AppError. Bare throw new Error(...) is reserved for provably unreachable invariants. Input validation — including daemon-side decoding of command input — throws AppError('INVALID_ARGS', ...). Coercion of unknown caught errors uses asAppError(err, fallbackCode), which preserves the cause chain; do not hand-roll err instanceof AppError ? err : new AppError(...).
  2. Code selection. Use the most specific KnownAppErrorCode; COMMAND_FAILED is for genuine runtime failures of a well-formed request, never a catch-all for capability gaps (UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION), contention (DEVICE_IN_USE, the only retriable code), or ambiguity (AMBIGUOUS_MATCH). New codes are added to the union deliberately; machine-dispatchable sub-classification rides in details.reason (the lease registry is the model).
  3. Hints answer "what should the agent run next". A hint is required wherever the per-code default from defaultHintForCode would mislead; it is omitted where the default suffices — mass-adding boilerplate hints is worse than the default. Shared failure modes get shared hint constants next to the code that detects them (selectorFailureHint, STALE_REF_HINT in src/selectors/resolve.ts; resolveIosDevicectlHint; bootFailureHint), not copy-pasted strings. Re-wraps preserve an existing hint rather than clobbering it.
  4. Wrapping external tool failures. Prefer exec.ts errors as-is. A hand-rolled wrap of an allowFailure result must carry { stdout, stderr, exitCode, processExitError: true } so normalizeError can surface the first meaningful stderr line instead of "tool exited with code N".
  5. The wire error contract is code, message, hint, details (redacted), diagnosticId, logPath, plus optional typed signals retriable / supportedOn — the fields are absent unless confidently known. Every consumer surface (CLI human, CLI --json, SDK, MCP, events timeline) must carry code + message + hint at minimum; rehydration helpers (throwDaemonError, toDaemonHttpRpcError) copy all fields, and NormalizedError hoists the typed signals so --json consumers see them.
  6. Observability. Failed requests always flush diagnostics: diagnosticId + ndjson logPath accompany every error (daemon-side under the session state dir, client-side under ~/.agent-device/logs). Messages must not embed raw stderr dumps or secrets — structured context belongs in details, which is redacted at normalize/write time.

Consequences

  • Agents can branch on code, retry on retriable, and follow hint without parsing prose; wording can improve without breaking consumers (except strings pinned by help-text guarantees — update those tests in lockstep).
  • The known-code union stays small and meaningful; the widened (string & {}) type still lets runner/daemon codes pass through, so SDK consumers keep a default branch.
  • New call sites have a documented bar: right code, contextual message naming the target, hint only when the default misleads, cause preserved.