The copilot CLI often prints the messages: Request failed due to a transient API error. Retrying...

[yurivict]

What does "transient API error" mean?

Could anybody provide an example of the API handling code that would legitimately have such code:
throw std::runtime_error("transient API error")

What the condition of the above error might be?

[stephentoub]

It means the CLI tried to access the LLM and got back an error that should only be temporary. The CLI will retry several times for such errors but then ultimately report back that it couldn't make forward progress because of the "transient", or temporary, error.