Errors Agent Skill

Use this skill whenever a design must accommodate the inevitability of human error — typos, wrong-button presses, misread instructions…

Context cost
4.8k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
2 files · 19.1 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
Apache-2.0the author’s own terms
Last change
—no release on file
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Use this skill whenever a design must accommodate the inevitability of human error — typos, wrong-button presses, misread instructions, mistimed actions, misunderstandings of system state. Trigger when designing form validation, input handling, destructive flows, complex multi-step procedures, alert systems, or any UI where users can do the wrong thing. Trigger when post-incident analyses reveal patterns of "human error" — most are design errors in disguise.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

design
Filed under

Design & Media

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md14.2 kB · preview
--- name: errors ---
6# Errors
7
8Most "accidents" attributed to human error are actually design errors. The user took the action the design invited; the action's consequence wasn't what the user intended. Reframing errors as a *design* property — rather than a *user* failing — opens the design space dramatically: errors can be prevented, made impossible, made obvious, or made recoverable. The right strategy depends on the kind of error.
9
10## Definition (in our own words)
11
12An error is any action (or omission) that produces an unintended result. Errors come in two distinct kinds, and they need different design responses. **Slips** are skill-based failures: the user knew what to do but their action didn't match their intent — a typo, a wrong-button click, a slip of attention. **Mistakes** are knowledge-based failures: the user did exactly what they intended, but the intent was wrong because their model of the situation was wrong — they misread an alarm, misunderstood a diagram, made a wrong choice based on incomplete information. The two kinds happen for different reasons; they're prevented by different design moves.
13
14## Origins and research lineage
15
16- **Donald Norman**, "Categorization of Action Slips" (*Psychological Review*, 1981, vol. 88) and *The Design of Everyday Things* (1988). Norman introduced the slip/mistake distinction to design vocabulary and argued that error is a property of design, not user.
17- **James Reason**, *Human Error* (Cambridge University Press, 1990). The standard reference work in human-error research, originally from industrial-safety domains (aviation, nuclear, medical). Reason expanded Norman's framework with detailed taxonomies (skill-based / rule-based / knowledge-based errors) and the "Swiss cheese" model of cascading failures.
18- **Lidwell, Holden & Butler** (2003) compactly distinguished slips (errors of execution, automatic/unconscious) from mistakes (errors of intention, conscious mental processes). The book identifies two slip subtypes (Action, Attention) and three mistake subtypes (Perception, Decision, Knowledge).
19- **Charles Perrow**, *Normal Accidents* (1984). Argued that complex tightly-coupled systems produce errors as an emergent property of system design, not as failures of individual operators. Influential in industrial-safety and software-system design.
20- **Atul Gawande**, *The Checklist Manifesto* (2009). Documented how checklists prevent slip-type errors in complex high-stakes domains (surgery, aviation).
21
22## Why the slip/mistake distinction matters
23
24The two error types are caused by different mechanisms and prevented by different design moves:
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md2,006 words
Files2
LicenceApache-2.0
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈170
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
4,605
on trigger
The instruction body and 1 supporting file, read only when the skill fires.
2.4%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 24% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

4.8k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

2 files, 19.1 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md14.2 kB
  • references/error-research-history.md4.9 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 2 files you can review in full before installing. The Apache-2.0 licence covers the templates and examples as well as the instructions.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Errors · 4.8k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/errors/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/errors" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/errors ] || { mv .claude/skills/errors "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/errors" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/errors"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add hashgraph-online/errors

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/errors/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/errors/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/errors" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/errors ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/errors "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/errors" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/errors" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/errors/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Versionnot versioned
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencehashgraph-online/errors

Versions

Its author publishes no version number, so there is nothing here to pin to: what you install is the folder as it stands today. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

Pinning

Nothing to pin to: this skill carries no version number of its own. What you install is what the folder holds on the day you install it.

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Publisher
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