Skill: TraceMem Safety and Failure Modes

Purpose

This skill teaches how to handle errors, timeouts, and failures gracefully within the TraceMem ecosystem.

When to Use

• When writing try/catch blocks around your decision logic.
• When handling network errors or policy denials.
• When ensuring your agent is robust.

When NOT to Use

• Do not use these patterns to swallow critical errors silently.

Core Rules

• Fail Closed: If something goes wrong, the default safe state is "stop and close".
• Rollback on Error: If an exception occurs, you MUST catch it and call decision_close(action="rollback").
• Idempotency: Use idempotency keys for writes to safely retry them after network blips.

Correct Usage Pattern