What this skill does
A raw API error response — a stack trace, an HTTP status with a cryptic JSON body, a webhook that silently failed — usually needs translating before you can act on it, and that translation is where a lot of debugging time quietly goes. This skill takes any raw error output and returns a plain-English diagnosis: what actually went wrong, the most likely root cause, and one concrete next step to try first.
How it works
- Error parsing — reads the raw error text (HTTP status + body, stack trace, log line) and identifies the error type and the layer it came from (auth, rate limit, validation, network, server-side).
- Root-cause reasoning — cross-references the specific error against known patterns for common APIs and general HTTP/REST semantics to propose the most likely cause, not just a restatement of the error text.
- Next-step suggestion — ends with one specific, actionable next step (a header to check, a field to validate, a retry-with-backoff pattern to add) rather than a generic "check your API key" catch-all.
Requirements
- Works on Claude AI (any surface) and on OpenClaw (useful inside a debugging or on-call workflow) — a pure reasoning skill with no external tool dependency.
Setup
- Unzip the package into your Skills directory, keeping the folder structure intact.
- Paste the raw error output (status code, response body, and the request that triggered it if you have it) to get a diagnosis.
What you get
- A plain-English translation of any raw API error — no more staring at a stack trace or cryptic JSON body
- A most-likely root cause instead of just a restatement of the error text
- One concrete, specific next step to try first
- Worked examples across auth, rate-limit, and validation error types to calibrate what a good diagnosis looks like