Prompt template
Recovery path prompts for failed API flows.
Use this when an API failure leaves users stuck, unsure whether work saved, or forced to restart.
Copy/paste template
Prompt
Design recovery paths for this API-backed flow. Classify each failure with an error taxonomy, timeout budget, retry policy, fallback UI, draft persistence rule, state reconciliation rule, and user-facing next action. Cover validation failure, auth failure, network loss, timeout, partial success, stale data, duplicate submit, and service outage.
Terms this prompt forces into the work
Recovery path
Defines how the user continues after each failure.
Error taxonomy
Separates user-fixable, retryable, and support-required failures.
Timeout budget
Sets when waiting becomes failure.
Retry policy
Decides what can be safely attempted again.
Fallback UI
Prevents a failed component from becoming a dead end.
State reconciliation
Resolves disagreement between UI, server, and saved draft.
Related guides
AI coding agent vocabulary for robust app workflows.
AI coding agent vocabulary for fixing vibe-coded apps: statecharts, step state, transition tables, guard conditions, draft persistence, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
Fallback UI vs. error boundary vs. recovery path: which failure term do you need?
A practical comparison of fallback UI, error boundary, recovery path, error taxonomy, retry policy, and observability for AI coding-agent prompts.
Prompt terms cheat sheet for coding agents.
A coding-agent vocabulary cheat sheet for state, workflow, retries, recovery, persistence, and failure handling.
Vibe-coded app reliability terms for builders using AI agents.
Vocabulary for fixing vibe-coded apps that lose state, duplicate side effects, fail between steps, or cannot recover: statecharts, transition tables, idempotency, checkpoints, fallback UI, and recovery paths.
Common questions
What makes a recovery path good?
The user knows what happened, whether work is safe, what can be retried, and what action to take next.
Should every error use the same message?
No. Different failures need different recovery paths, retry rules, and user actions.