feat(engine): give the model actionable detail on a failed child-agent call - #88
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…t call Stacked on #76 (fix/on-tool-error-hook-failure-crashes-run), which made a failed child-agent call recoverable instead of crashing the run but returned only a generic notice to the model. A model can only correct a call it can't read the failure of. This replaces the generic "internal error, not a problem with the arguments" notice with: - A validation failure (malformed tool args) is reworded into field-level detail via validation_problems()/_invalid_args_message() — which fields were wrong and why — without echoing the rejected arguments back into the model's context. - Any other child failure now passes its safe_error()-bounded cause through to the model (_child_failure_message()), the same contract a regular tool failure already has with its caller, instead of a generic message that gives the model nothing to act on. - _AgentCall's message field gets a description clarifying it takes a single plain-text string, reducing how often the orchestrator sends a shape that would only fail validation in the first place. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
AmitAvital1
marked this pull request as draft
August 8, 2026 07:41
AmitAvital1
marked this pull request as ready for review
August 8, 2026 09:18
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Stacked on #76 — please review/merge that one first.
What
#76 made a failed child-agent call recoverable instead of crashing the run, but the model only got a generic notice back (
"Agent 'X' failed to complete this request. This is an internal error, not a problem with the arguments."). A model can't correct a call it can't read the failure of.This PR replaces that generic notice with actionable detail:
validation_problems()/_invalid_args_message()into field-level detail — which fields were wrong and why — without echoing the rejected arguments back into the model's own context.safe_error()-bounded cause through to the model (_child_failure_message()) — the same contract a regular tool failure already has with its caller — instead of a message that gives the model nothing to act on._AgentCall.messagegets a schema description clarifying it's a single plain-text string, reducing how often the orchestrator sends a shape that would only fail validation in the first place.Test plan
test_orchestrator_recovers_from_invalid_child_tool_args— asserts the model sees field-level detail ("Invalid arguments for 'flights': message: Input should be a valid string") and that the rejected argument value never reaches the model's context or any log field.test_orchestrator_recovers_from_child_agent_crash— updated to assert the actual cause ("Model execution failed") reaches the model instead of a generic notice.make lint,make typecheck,make testall pass🤖 Generated with Claude Code