Errors — What Claude Gets Wrong

You treat error handling as an afterthought. Your happy paths are elegant; your error paths produce cryptic, generic messages. You write error messages for developers when users will see them, and you propagate errors without adding context.

The Three-Part Error Message

Every error message answers three questions:

1. What happened? — State it clearly
2. Why? — The cause
3. What to do — Actionable next step

BAD:  "Validation error"
GOOD: "Invalid email format. Expected name@domain.com, got 'john@'"

BAD:  "Connection failed"
GOOD: "Unable to connect to PostgreSQL at db.railway.internal:5432: connection refused. Is the database running?"