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API result status discards error details (always "error - temporary") #509
Description
Summary
All API handlers hardcode status: "error - temporary" in their catch blocks. The real error type and message only survive inside the rendered SVG content. Callers that read result.status cannot tell what went wrong.
Details
Example from packages/core/src/api/index.js:
} catch (err) {
if (err instanceof Error) {
return {
status: "error - temporary",
...This pattern repeats in index.js, gist.js, pin.js, top-langs.js, and wakatime.js.
For unattended jobs this makes diagnosis hard. The log cannot answer:
- Is it a rate limit?
- Is it a 502?
- Is it
ECONNRESET? - Is it a GraphQL error?
- Is it a token problem?
Proposal
Keep the legacy prefix for compatibility. Append the error type and message:
error - temporary (MAX_RETRY: Downtime due to GitHub API rate limiting ...)
error - temporary (Missing params "username" ...)
error - temporary (Error: connect ECONNRESET 140.82.x.x:443)
A small helper next to retrieveSecondaryMessage in common/error.ts can build this string for all five handlers.
I have a working implementation and will open a PR.
Activity
luojiyin1987 commentedon Aug 24, 2026
Update on the design: the first implementation appended the details to the status string (
error - temporary (MAX_RETRY: ...)). Review of that PR showed it breaks the exactstatus === "error - temporary"comparisons inapps/backend/router.js, which would cache transient errors for 10 hours instead of 10 minutes.The final design keeps
statusstable and adds an optional structured field instead:See PR #511 for the reworked diff.
martin-mfg commentedon Aug 24, 2026
Thanks for bringing this up and for the corresponding PR!
I will have to see when I find the time to review and merge the changes. In the meantime the
fail_on_erroroption might be helpful for your situation.I would like to better understand what problem you encountered. What kind of "unattended job" are you running - simply github-readme-stats-action? And what caused the temporary error for you?PS: Found the answer in vizrtluo#1:
feat(api,error): include structured error details in API results (#511)