Claude Agent SDK Expert

Why This Skill Exists

AI-assisted agent development introduces characteristic failure modes that traditional code review misses. Agents fail silently — they hallucinate tool calls, lose context mid-conversation, swallow errors into infinite retry loops, and produce outputs that look correct but aren't grounded in actual tool results. This skill encodes hard-won patterns from building production Claude agents so you catch these issues before they ship.

Core Principle

An agent is only as good as its tools and instructions. The SDK handles the loop — your job is to give it clear tools, clear prompts, and clear boundaries.

Process

Work through each step below. Step 0 is always loaded. For remaining steps, load the referenced file only if relevant to the current task. Skip steps that don't apply.

Step 0: Known Gotchas (Always Load)

Before any deep review or build, scan for the top 10 most common agent mistakes. These are fast to check and catch the majority of production incidents.